Question about the ZUmo 550

I've read most of the blurb and had a little fiddle with said beast at the
NEC motorcycle show.
But, I still haven't been able to suss out if the thing has "text to speech"
capability.
My TT910 has this feature and it's very handy. If you get a text on your
paired mobly it'll read it out for you. I like that! and if you want, it
will tell you streetnames etc as you drive.
This would be real nice on the Zumo. I'm poised with CC ready to buy one but
would like to know.
Also, anybody seen any really good low prices on the interweb for said
beast?

TIA.

--
Greybeard

FLHTCUI UK-07 96 cu-in (Written off after 3 days & 182 miles!) Courtesy of a
myopic female driver.
FLHTCUI UK-07 Mk II (Arrived! but not registered yet!)
Trumpet Trophy 1200 -96, (The Barge) for rainy days.

ukrm@foxtails[dot]co[dot]uk

From father garmin: http://www.garmin.com/products/zumo/

"zumo 550 comes ready to go right out of the box with preloaded City
Navigator® NT street maps and a hefty points of interest (POIs) database,
including motels, restaurants, fuel, ATMs and more. Simply enter a
destination, and zumo takes you there with turn-by-turn voice directions
that speak street names. In addition, zumo accepts customized points of
interest such as school zones and safety cameras and includes proximity
alerts to warn of upcoming POIs. It is also compatible with Garmin's Tour
GuideT - a free utility that allows you to build and upload a database of
POIs that are encoded with photos and MP3 files."

I'm going blind in my old age!
I read that, but must say until I read it twice again now I didn't take in
the street names bit!

Thanks for showing me the light ;o))

--
Greybeard

FLHTCUI UK-07 96 cu-in (Written off after 3 days & 182 miles!) Courtesy of a
myopic female driver.
FLHTCUI UK-07 Mk II (Arrived! but not registered yet!)
Trumpet Trophy 1200 -96, (The Barge) for rainy days.

ukrm@foxtails[dot]co[dot]uk

Greybeard wrote:


Another thing about the zumo that is not real clear in reading the
online manual is that it will create multiple destination routes when
you use the Save a Route (sort of a planning routes in advance) feature.
That gives you the option of taking full control of your routing by
adding stops or via points to a route.

And it also does save a track history. When you plug the zumo into a
PC, it creates a *.gpx file that contains all the routes, waypoints, and
tracks. That file is in the \gpx folder on the Garmin drive (main
memory, not the SD card).

None of this is mentioned or explained in the manual so how often the
tracks are saved and how vulnerable the data is to being overwritten or
lost is not known yet.

But it looks like the *.gpx file (named current.gpx) will save a
considerable about of data. The limits are not known yet. I had one
guy let me look at the file from his zumo and it contained four or five
days of tracks (he had only had it installed for a few days) in and
around the city he lives in but he had not taken any longer distance
rides.

But, worst case, it looks like if you can save that *.gpx file to a PC
once a day or so you could collect data from longer trips without having
to pay too much attention to the process.

The track data in the *.gpx file contained the full data stream with
lat/long fix, date/time, and elevation so you can use it in MapSource or
other utilities to determine speeds, distances, and track elevation
profiles. It was collecting 20-30 points per mile in city driving so it
looks like the trackpoint collection rate is the same as or similar to
the Garmin "Auto" setting on other units.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)

Shoulda read all the blurb - see http://www.garmin.com/products/zumo/spec.html

where it tells you that it has text-to-speech

David

Greybeard wrote: