Shalimar Restaurant, Dachau

I've been a regular customer at this place. Whenever homesickness get too much to bear or the desire for some delicious 'home' food overcomes me (read too lazy to cook myself), I let myself to be pampered with the lovely food at this place.

The place is not too big; probably 10-15 tables. You are recieved and served by the owner, Mr.Bhatia himself. He always has something new to talk about. Pleasant atmosphere, food that leaves you licking your finders away, good service and decent prices are the pros here. At the end of a lovely dinner, you certainly feel you got more than what you paid for.
The music at the place could be updated a bit; I guess old bollywood songs or hindustanic music is meant to give the typical indian feeling. The restaurants location in Dachau makes it a bit difficult to reach when travelling with local transport. On weekends the service can get quite slow because there is only one person to attend to all. But it is always worth the wait.

Summary:
+ simply great food
+ regular prices compared
+ good service
+ pleasant atmosphere
+ special diwali parties and other festive events are held every year.
+ Lunch Buffet for 7,90€
+ Special wishes for 'off-the-menu' dishes are gladly taken care of.

- No home delivery service; food can be ordered but must be picked up.
- Service gets slow during weekends
- The boring music kinda gets on the nerve at times.
- The Buffet can be quite disappointing at times.

My rating: 4/5

Website: http://www.shalimar-dachau.de/

TomTom Go 630 Traffic

I've always been fascinated by the GPS- technology and I am a faithful follower of the TomTom clan; they are the leaders in navigation. About 3 months back I bought my first TomTom, the 630 Traffic.

There was the usual screening process involved before the purchase. And my other top favourites were Navigon 2200 and a model from Garmin. TomTom and Navigon were the most popular models so I devoted more time with them and Garmin eventually fell out of the scene. I was really impressed about the looks and the graphics of Navigon, but the hardware was a bit disappointing. I tried out different Navigon models and they all seemed to be really slow and seemed to 'hang' pretty often. So Tomtom was the winner. I bought the TomTom from Media Markt for 249€; it was an offer with free Western Europe maps.

I'm very much satisfied by the this little 'pathfinder'. With QuickFix, details about the satellite paths for the next 7 days, a gps fix was possible in a matter of seconds. With IQ Route you travel not only fast but also more intelligent. (A new useful feature by Garmin btw. is the Eco-Route, which lets you also calculate the most fuel efficient route.) The device lets you make your own personal corrections in the map and lets you share with and recieve updates from other tomtom Users via MapShare. It also functions as a great handsfree-equipment thanks to bluetooth. Oh and you can actually dictate your address too.

Now what I did not like about the tomtom. This company is supposed to produce devices in the premium class. They have thought of many idea but a 'Back' button seems impossible to program. Yap, you read right. There is no Back button. So if you're like me and toggle often in a hurry and miss what your looking for, then you get to have fun toggling through about 8 menus till you get back to what you wanted. This is really irritating. It is the same with the TomTom Home PC Software while downloading POIs. You might have to search through a couple of POIs before you find a few good ones. But as soon as you download one, your remaining search list and filters are reset and you get to start search again.



Summary:

+ very fast gps lock with QuickGPSFix
+ about 2 hours of battery life
+ regular updates from users with MapShare
+ IQ Routes and Reality View
+ Customisable Maps and POIs: you can also make your own POIs
+ free map update till one month after registraion

- The lack of the Bac button; this can really get on your nerves.
- QuickFix update needs to be done every week; else a pretty slower gps lock.
- MapShare only possible for a year from last Map update/purchase.



My ranking: 4/5

Courtesy:
http://munich-navi.de/images/tomtom630.JPG