Suppport Thread for the TND 500, TND 700 or future Rand McNally products.

I purchased a new Garmin dezl 560lt today.

Picked it up at a loves, the Flying J did not have them in stock.

Seems Garmin offers 2 types, the LT with life time traffic reports and the LMT that comes with life time traffic and map updates.

Opening the box, I found out why it seemed so heavy. The mount is a bean bag sort of thing. It has a Flat sticky pad bottom with 4 “pouches” holding weight beads. Not so sure about how it will work, but we shall see. They do have a suction cup window mount and a number of accessories on the web site.

The screen size is a 5 inches. It has a wide screen aspect, so a bit wider than tall.

Why am I posting this, you may ask.
The Garmin unit is a replacement for the dead TND unit.

It is a long story that started back in 2009 when I first purchased a TND unit. Some of the story you can read posted here on the forum.

Bottom line is;
3 TND 500 units exchanged for hardware and software problems.
1 TND 700 sent in for repair for a battery/charging system problem.


The dead TND 700 I have now is due to the broken USB port on the unit. This would be the second time this unit will be sent back.

To say I am disappointed with the Rand McNally TND product is using kindness and tact.

In the last 18 or so months, maybe half of that time, a sort of working unit has been in the truck with me. The rest of the time, it has been in transit for exchange or repair.

The TND product has problems. Both hardware design and software. Rand McNally knows this too, the 5/700 units have seen at least 5 major revisions since release. Why so many during the first year?

Will the 5/710 units have the same questionable reliability? Guess time will tell.

I don't think I need to rehash all the routing issues or the missing and outdated mapping and POI data.
The avoid feature still does not work correctly. Still routes with U-turns and toll roads.

The last two releases of the TNDDock program also seem to have a problem. Beyond it being a resource and network hog. The program hangs a lot. I tend to hibernate my computer rather than a full shut down, this way it comes up quicker when I need it. The TNDDock seems to have a problem with loading out of a hibernate. It seems to hang in a background mode, but not completely.

I noted a performance issue with the computer, so I started looking for the problem. I am a bit old school and still use keyboard commands for a lot of things. That’s when I found the TNDDock hanging. Using the alt+tab to change active windows. The selection bar would come up and the TNDDock would be sitting there. If you select it, it will try to finish loading.

Because of this, I have removed the TNDDock from auto starting, via my boot manager.
As soon as I did this, performance issue was gone. I only use the TNDDock by starting it manually.
(actually, today, I removed the program completely)


I have in the past communicated my dissatisfaction with the TND product in private e-mail. I also asked for a complete refund of my purchase price for the TND unit based on the problems and distrust of the product. So far I have had no response to this request. I have followed it up several times.

In the last few days, I have had a number of conversations with people about the TND units. They have been most interesting. Several store managers have told me the number one returned electronic device they have has been the TND product. One store manager told me that if any one asks to purchase a TND unit, only a manager can do the transaction because of the return rate on them.

Rand McNally released a bad product. I believe they did this with full knowledge that the product was of questionable reliability. It clearly has hardware and software issues.

An expensive lesson learned. A lot of time wasted.

 

Hey, so Rand needs to do some 'splainin' on the delayed software updates for the 700 and 500. I sure hope that all of us 700/500 users out there who have putting up with quirky units for the last year and regularly sending in suggestions and bug reports will not be left out in the cold.

Please do not use Microsoft's policies and market ethics as examples... Microsoft blows. Let's use Apple's instead on the iPhone. When new software comes out, all previous models can be upgraded to the new software and are only limited by hardware restrictions.

So Rand needs to tell us... will the 700/500 units get the software updates that have come out on the 710/510 or not? What are actual differences between the 700/500 and 710/510? Is the processor faster? Is the graphics resolution better or the graphics processor more robust? What????

And, do I understand correctly that the 710/510 were put out on the market without a working TND Dock interface?

Don't leave us hanging.

 

Used itunes lately? It's garbage. New software for the iphone is usually to break some new functionality that someone has managed to unlock. So no, Apple is no better.

 

Thanks Mark and everyone else who has taken the time to give input on this thread. I ordered the TND 710 this morning from Road Trucker Inc and look forward to its arrival.

 

Headed south on 85 it stops at MM 119. I get off at 103, so I don't know about anything south of there.

 

Its GREAT being able to see an overview of the whole multi stop trip with the new 710. And I like that dashboard thing to. I still wish you could see the whole route (even if just the highways) on multi stop trips. Any chance they will be adding that?

 

Any Updates on bag, carriers for us TND 700 sereis customers?