byrnefm

Hi,

I gave my new BT-338 GPS and iGuidance 2.1.2 a good test drive over the weekend on my Dell X50v A04 - taking a trip from Dublin to the northwest of Ireland (Donegal) and then using it on/off in the NW for the weekend. My experiences are those below - I'm curious if others have similar experiences with the combination?

iGuidance Europe 2.1.2:
Good Points:
- good coverage, all regional and national roads covered, Dublin city well covered.
- screen updated very quickly (though at speeds above around 45mph, there was a slight lag with where one is - eg. a turn arrives in reality before the map updates to that point)
- for the roads which are covered, they are up-to-date, much better than I had expected for over here.
- every river I could think of seemed to be covered!

Bad points:
- the software hangs if on the 'satellite' view too long - press the satellite button again to return to map view and it just froze. Had to reset the X50v with the stylus twice because of this.
- once or twice, while traveling, the software just froze (map stopped updating). A reset was required.
- no distance traveled feature! Or is there a way to turn one on? I would have thought that it was a standard feature.
- street search feature is pretty useless for Ireland unless you live in Dublin.
- if you travel off of a regional road, you're off the road altogether :)
- route distances (to towns within 25 miles) are as the crow flies, not along actual roads. In one case, a town mentioned was about 130 miles away, as it was over a bay...

The BT-338 GPS (latest firmware from August)
- Amazingly sensitive - I picked up reception indoors where I didn't think it had a hope of picking up anything (out of line-of-sight).
- Usually got a fix of 7-9 satellites, depending on where the unit was placed.
- So small!

Bluetooth:
- there seems to be a very definite order that you must turn on/off bluetooth and the software - fail to do so and the X50v wouldn't sync up to the BT-338. Had to soft reset occasionally as a result
- may have been the result of some of the hangs noted above

Other notes:
- I read last month that Navteq are currently surveying the Irish roads to (drastically) improve the Irish road coverage and this surveying should be completed by the end of the year (an 18-month project).
- When asking iGuidance to give a route to a town when on a road it doesn't know about, the first instruction it gives is: "Proceed to nearest road" :)
- iGuidance is very heavy on CPU - it really isn't feasible to do anything else with the unit while iGuidance is running.

Things I'd like to see improved / added:
- a decrease in the number of hangs!
- distance traveled feature
- 'towns within 25 miles' to be within 25 miles as one would drive, not as the crow flies.
- for the PC version: an increase in the range of selectable serial ports (I know there's a workaround - I managed to mess up my Widcomm install in the process and must reinstall it now...)
- latitude and longtitude selectable in either degrees with decimals or degrees/minutes/seconds when in satellite mode.
- nice to have: ability to sync one's X50v time with reported GPS time

Overall:
- I'm happy I bought the GPS, although the number of sync problems I've had already is a bit of a pain. Having to reset the PDS on several occasions was particularly annoying, especially when driving! (Note - my brother reset the device, not me :) ). The Irish road coverage will improve next year but until then, it's fine for general navigation in Ireland. Anyone whom I showed it to was impressed (both with the GPS and the X50v itself)!

Finally, a question: is "North" reported as magnetic north or true north?

JakeRich

Most of the time "hangs" are the result of memory constraints. Make sure you have plenty of free memory when you start iGuidance (or any other navigation software suite, for that matter). North is, I think, True North since that is the information that comes from the GPS.

byrnefm

I emailed iGuidance support about getting a distance traveled option and got a reply (after just a day) saying that there isn't such a feature yet - they thought that people would prefer to use their car's odometer instead! It'll be some time before the next (major) release, so the support person wasn't able to tell me if it would be added in the next release of iGuidance.