Last week I bought myself a toy that I’d been waiting for some time for – a TomTom Go 740 Live from Amazon.co.uk. I’ve been keeping an eye on the SatNav market for a while, and though the TomTom has a major limitation for me in that you can’t navigate to an OS Grid Reference, the quality of the software, the user interface and the navigation itself have always placed it ahead of its competitors in my book. I will say that I have had a TomTom before – this was TomTom Navigator version 2 on a PDA which I’ve had some 8 years. By now, it’s mostly useless, with major problems with maps and the PDA is obviously creaking at the hinges a bit.

So, when it arrived I was immediately impressed with its size – it’s a lot thinner than the 910 I played with a while ago, much lighter as well. I plugged it in and got the TomTom Home software installed – available for Mac as well as PC – and downloaded all my updates. I used the “Latest map guarantee” to get all the latest map updates, and with the x40 series, you now get 3 months free subscription, so I downloaded all of those updates as well. I was also very impressed with the windscreen mount – it’s rock solid, far better than the old one.

Off I went…and that’s where the problems started. The device simply refused to connect to the mobile network – it has a built-in SIM and ‘mobile data’ connection. Not good, the menu wouldn’t even give me the serial number of the hardware. I raised the issue on Friday with TomTom on their website, and they acknowledged that they were seeing a temporary problem with their servers and suggested a reset process for me to try out once they’d fixed their servers.

Now, being a bit of a geek, I spent a few hours researching this problem (Error 1001). A number of forum users have had the problem – some noted that the excuse given out by TomTom of “server problems” appears to be bogus. I had nothing to compare it against in this case, and those reports were typically US-based, so I gave TomTom the benefit of the doubt.

So roll on Monday morning and lo and behold – the process completes but I still can’t connect. I replied via their online problem system and by mid-morning, I was to impatient so I called them. A very friendly lady led me through a number of procedures, none of which worked and gave me one last one to try at home (I’d forgotten the cradle behind). That also failed, so that night I raised it with Amazon who shipped a new unit out to me.

This morning the replacement arrived. I plugged it in and immediately had some trouble – you can only register one new TomTom device per account every 6 months. This is to stop you from buying one for your friend as well and both having updates – fair enough. So a quick call to TomTom confirmed this and the lovely lady solved that problem within half an hour (Thanks Brandy!).

The new TomTom replaced the old one fine (TomTom gives you several options including backing out of the change – very handy) and off it went to grab updates. Once that completed I immediately checked signal – and yes, it was connecting. Great! But wait, it refused to download my “HD Traffic” updates. Apparently my subscription had expired…and a quick phone call to TomTom (thanks Jade this time!) revealed that with the account reset they’d performed that morning, the 3 month free subscription that had been added was gone. That was quickly resolved and I now have a fully working TomTom.

What about the device itself? Well, navigation is as good as I expected – I have yet to use it in rush hour on a busy route, so I’ve not really used the IQ routes nor the HD traffic functions in anger. But the navigation is good – it takes the routes I know are fastest around here; it updates quickly when I go my own way; the announcements are clear; pronounciation of street and place names is pretty damn impressive, especially for some of the places around here and it even recognises “Senghenydd” when I told it when I was testing the voice recognition.

So, TomTom the device – 9 out of 10. Sorry, but you lose a point for not going OS Grid Reference. TomTom the company – 9 out of 10 – you had some mistakes but you corrected them promptly and politely. Very impressed. Well done, folks.

This is basically a review of it, so if you’re not interested, move on.

I started juicing when I was working nights for Mistral. Working nights is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever done to my body. I didn’t realise it at the time, but over the course of several months I completely screwed my body up – sleep patterns, digestion, skin quality, energy (or lack thereof) and a whole host of other problems. I’d have frequent headaches and my weekly shopping included a pack of painkillers. I had a bit of a wakeup moment towards the end of my time there where I realised that this was Not a Good Thing and with some help from Steve we both started eating and living more healthily. One of the things we both discovered was Jason Vale’s books on juicing. I won’t go into the details here, but going from a crap food diet to a very healthy diet; dropping coffee almost completely; drinking lots of water – these helped turn things around. Within months I was feeling great and had lost weight. I’d also finally got off nightshift and eventually changed jobs.

So I’ve been juicing on and off for a while – the biggest problem is the cost. Fruit, especially in winter, tends to be fairly expensive so requires some careful budgeting. I’m back on that particular bandwagon again in an effort to boost my fitness having discovered a job that in its first year saw me gain almost a stone. My first juicer, a Moulinex BKA14 JuiceMaster Junior, lasted quite well but has a few problems. The juice jug is too small; it doesn’t extract enough juice – and most importantly, mine no longer actually spins.

Which? prompted me to look at a few juicers and I finally settled on their top rated one – a Breville JE27 which I ordered from Amazon and it arrived a few days ago. I couldn’t resist – as soon as I got home, it was out of the box and plugged in, ready to juice.

First of all, it’s heavier and bigger. The design is slightly different too – the meaty bit is effectively a grater disc which a metal sieve at a shallow angle. As it spins, it mashes your fruit and with the speed it’s turning at, it works its way up the sieve, with the juice going through and pulp eventually being thrown off, where it goes into some kind of repository. The Moulinex juicer had the repository at one side, with the problem that the cover would collect large amounts of pulp as it whizzed around which occasionally fouled the sieve and sent it off-balance. The new Breville one has a different design. The pulp collection bowl surrounds the whole sieve, which means that any angle the pulp comes off at is fine.

There are a number of other changes – the juice jug is bigger and the motor is a lot more powerful. The sieve is better quality as is the mashing-bit at the bottom. It generally feels like a better quality product as well – oh and it has a full-size chute so I can thrown a whole apple down. Saves a lot of time. Also, lots of parts have rubber seals on them where they link up to another part – this solves the major problem I had with my old juicer where after dismantling it you’d find half your juice was leaking into the guts of the machine -under- all the parts you could wash.

So, I turned it on. After looking around for the helicopter that I thought was starting its engines, I lobbed an apple down. The pulp that came out was a) smaller pieces than the old juicer and b) considerably drier. From four apples, I managed to get nigh on half a litre of juice. I’m impressed.

Cleaning is easier as well. This has 4 parts to clean - the old one had 7. It just makes life that little bit easier. They even include a little scrubbing brush to clean the sieve – oh and that’s important. The pieces are all marked “Diswasher safe” but to be honest, I wouldn’t want to wash the sieve in a dishwasher. It has very small holes that by the time you come to wash it are full of very small bits of fruit. Very small. If it dries, it’s welded on. So first of all, it needs washing immediately. Secondly, the easiest way to wash it is to just scrub it under running water. Takes about 30s – if you want, you can wash it with soap afterwards as well.

So yeah impressed. It takes -ages- to spin down from full speed, and the amount of juice it gives you is seriously impressive. Chalk this customer up as a happy one.