ddavtian

Originally Posted by Nypyren

More CONs for TomTom Navigator 5.00: - It seems to have a pretty serious memory leak that freezes the entire PDA (I have an X50v and BT338) fairly often on long trips. It's annoying to have to soft reset the PDA when it's mounted on a car mount :( On the plus side, TomTom will remember your planned route if you soft reset (but you SHOULDN'T BE FORCED TO).

Version 5.00 had a bad memory leak on VGA devices, crashing PDAs within an hour. V5.21, out for long time and available on their site, fixed that problem. I've used on on X50v for 8 hours trip, no memory problem. And now after it exits, you can use the PDA immediately (v5.0 was taking 10-15 minutes or soft reset, to start using it again).

firemann816

I have an Axim X51V (WM5) with a 2gig SD Card

iGuidance 3.0 with a BT 3359

Pros:

• Maps were accurate on our recent family trip - very, accurate.
• ETA was accurate
• Landscape or Portrait Mode maps were viewable and clear
• Kept our next turn on top of screen with street name and distance to next turn
• Wife drove and said, 'this is neat, I'd like to borrow it when I go out of town on business.' :) I told her my Axim did that and more... - Helped me crawl out of the doghouse for the Axim purchase overall.

Cons-

• The voice prompts can get a little bossy, but can be killed easily on screen.
• Adding a favorite or a destination on your desktop (laptop) PC version and then synching doesnt add it into the PPC version.
• I don't like navigating its interface, menues or options.

Overall - it will get you there, on time with minimal pain in the car.
I do wish they would add it so when I set up a destination on my desktop PC and synch with the Axim, it would be in my list of destinations on my handheld.
Then I would spend less time in the handhelds interface, and therefore, complain about it less.
This was our first family vacation to a big city where we didnt get lost, and have a 'disagreement' in front of the kid. So iGuidance deserves praise for that. :approve:

jackb_guppy

The Long Trip w/ iGuidance and Mapopolis

Just got back from a cross state tour of Eastern Tennessee, and have a trip report of iGuidance and Mapopolis working their magic.

First the environment:
1) Large Car with 5 occupations
2) An in-car video system and lots of DVDs
3) Axim x50V and x51V
4) GPS: SEIDIO G4850 cradle, also Pharos iGPS 360. Both are wired to Axim, so they also supply power to charge the PPCs.
5) iGuidance V3 and Mapopolis 4.70

Mainly, we used x51V, in the G4850 cradle with iGuidance for driving. We switched to Mapopolis only in congested or when I wanted to play, but already knew the way. The iGPS 360 was used with iGuidance and x50v so my oldest daughter playing Nav in the backseat could get into the act; else she was playing Monopoly the rest of the time.

My biases:
Yes, I have biases. I like iGuidance for long haul driving (100’s of miles per day). I like Mapopolis for running around town. So I want to put that up for going into the good, bad and ugly. My other bias with GPS software, is that I am a 2D person. I like the ability to get a “bird’s eye” view of the area around me, so 2D all the way.

The first leg: Driving from Memphis to Gatlinburg…

iGuidance worked ok. Three complaints: the color of the 2D daytime displays, handling of off road driving, and forcing driver to look at display to get enough information. One the plus side, iGuidance supplied helpful little quips like “Now drive for 149 miles”. These were quite and helpful, because it gave you idea when you will hear from it again. Also the continuous on screen count down of miles to go helped a lot too. Wife did like the idea of various random voices come out like bad Humphrey Bogart imprestion, to keep it lively on the way down the road.

Yellow with White secondary roads on the daytime display of 2D maps is VERY hard to read, and such makes seeing the “bird’s eye” view impossible. It makes finding a secondary road / bypass quickly an active of a stopped car, and fight with the Navigator (wife) about which way to go.

The off road driving issue makes starting in a parking lot a guessing game what to do next. At one point, we were driving out of parking, had the voice say make a left turn, we turned left, then the voice came back and said to make a U-Turn. The reason? The iGuidance started the trip (and directions) as if you where on the road and already driving the right way. Not coming to the road at a right angle. This caused many issues when trying to start on drive in town.

The forcing the driver to look at the screen is in direct response to off road driving issue. Since, iGuidance will not assume a direction when started, and only helps once you start driving, including rotating the map, so up is direction of movement (EVEN BACKWARDS!). You need to drive a short distance forward and then look at the map to figure out, how iGuidance has assumed you a getting on the road, going to destination.

Driving the Gatlinburg area…

Big issues here with iGuidance: where starting out on trip (noted prior) and announcement to upcoming turns.

The big plus was GPS in general, when we needed to find backway to our hotel. Gatlinburg, TN is a ONE ROAD town, getting from one end to the other is like 1 ½ hr trip for 2 miles. We were at the wrong end of town from the hotel and just turned on side street and headed up the fill, the iGuidance being used at the time and was set to shortest distance, it first said U-Turn, then found a route though the back-roads to the hotel.

The issue with upcoming turns in iGuidance seamed to set at 2mins, 1mins, 30secs, 15secs and BOING. This count down is helpful at high driving speeds, like “2miles Exit on Right, follow sign for 40 East”. But at in town speeds and TRAFFIC the messages are not helpful spaced, or with units of messages that are just poor, like “2,300ft Turn Left”. At half mile, or “5/10 of the mile, Turn Left” would be more of help. The other complaint with these messages is the distance given though accurate is based on the when the sentence is started. So “2miles, Exit on the Left” is helpful on freeway driving where road signs work the same way, but is harder to use in tight city driving, by the time you hear and process the message, you may have traveled 1/4mile so the turn is only 1.75mile away.

Also as a note, the maps have a few issues. I had two times while driving iGuidance reported in NC that we had left the road. It would be hard to do at those locations because of driving on ridge. Leaving the road would have been deadly.

The Mapopolis was also used for driving around Gatlinburg, including driving over the “Great Smokey Mountains” via US 441 into NC. I generally do not have issues with Mapopolis but this drive showed two issues: loading a local map for the next state and what appeared as an old map in the Mapopolis map set.

The first issue, with loading a local map, is basically based on how Mapopolis loads maps and that is by counties. So planning a trip in to a neighboring county may first require you to load the map of state with freeways and major roads. After loading that you need to zoom into the local area and load the county. Since my Mapopolis is generally setup to run around Memphis area, I had to clear it, to get to the full map list on my CF Card. The fast way to clear Mapopolis is pull the CF Card and open Mapopolis. It will then complain of no maps, and then you close it. Insert CF Card again, and restart Mapopolis. PRESS CANCEL when you have a chance or else it is going to try to load EVERY Map. I have all of US and CANADA on my CF Card and believe me it will take HOURS for it to read all the maps for “Finding Contiguous Map Sets”.

The second issue was while driving in NC, we found one area around Bryon City, NC that Mapopolis report that an invalid map was found, this stopped Mapopolis from working until we cleared the maps. The message referred us to Mapopolis webpage to buy the map. Which is way I believe it is an old map, even down load the entire US set at one time.

Leave Gatlinburg to Chattanooga…

Using iGuidance issues was reading the daytime 2D display to find bypass. GPS plus is using a bypass and getting back to the main road.

There was a major accident leaving Knoxville that closed the I-40 for a few hours. We got off the highway and had to parallel the freeway for 6 miles, then with iGuidance noting when to turn in the country to get us back on the freeway. What was the problem since the 2D daytime screen is hard to read, we asked directions to give us a basic starting point a drove of awhile to get a bearing then zoom out the map to see if we are paralleling the freeway correctly.

Running around Chattanooga…

We dumped iGuidance and reset Mapopolis for Chattanooga. When driving around Lookout Mountain with it short, quick turned streets I wanted the overall quickness of Mapopolis prompting and directions that tell you “600ft the Turn Right” and that is 600ft, from when the sentence stops! So you still have 600ft to go, very helpful in blind corners and steep hills!

Leaving Chattanooga and going home…

iGuidance all the way home. The only new burp was just leaving Chattanooga, I-24 dips into Georgia then back out to Nashville. When coming out of Georgia, iGuidance jumped from reporting on I-24 Westbound, to a service road, telling to turn in 6miles. Then when a lake started to separate the real from it’s imagery location, it final jump us back on to I-24.

Over all observations…

iGuidance runs about 2 seconds behind actual position on the display. It seams to want to know exactly where you were, even when it is wrong (See leaving Chattanooga). I wish I could find a option screen in iGuidance to set the nighttime 2D display for full time. The blue and dark blue roads are easy to see and help at the bird’s eye view. Also I would like an option to select measurement scales (like 1/10 of mile) over 2,300ft. Lastly an option to time messages and distances based on end of phase, instead of begin.

Mapopolis is still my preferred running around town software. I would like them to fix map loading with a option like “surrounding counties” or “counties with-in X miles”. So as you drive, the next counties are auto loaded and old counties are dropped. This way, if I am in new area, just dock to GPS, and the correct map is loaded and surrounding counties are also loaded, making it more a contiguous map.

JakeRich

@jackb_guppy, nice post! Mapopolis is working on a "regional" approach to map handling. They have a public beta available that sees maps a state at a time, which makes long distance planning much easier. The maps are still stored by county, but in state folders so that you can select the entire state at a time. It also remembers the regions better from run to run, so some of the problems you mentioned are resolved.

On the map colors, I agree with you about the map colors. It seems to me that the software designers should actually go out into the world with their product on a bright, sunny day and try out the color scheme before they commit to it. High contrast would really help!

mjoshi

Well I got lucky with
TomTom v 5, Dell GPS (which is similar to iGuidance, Destinator PN & Recently got Mio 310x.

Out of all this
TomTom
Pros -
Best Interface of all.
Very Easy to Navigate

Cons -
Heavy on resources
Not very good map data (TeleAtlas).

Dell GPS
Pros
Interface not as good as TomTom but very good and acceptable performance
Great mpa data
Very good routing and rerouting

Cons
not enough POI data and POI display on map is not as good

Destinator PN
Pros
Good Map Data
Very good customer service

Cons
Worst UI I've ever seen for some reason on my VGA screen as well as on PPC-6700 (QVGA) the display is pixaleted. I've tried everything possible to get it smooth graphic but seems to be no go. And if you've seen UI of TomTom you will never want to use Destinator PN.

So Final Verdict, I normally use DELL GPS for most of time as it has good interface with decent map data. TomTom is my second choice only because it has issue with map data. Destinator PN already uninstalled from Axim.

Anyone knows if TomTom 6.0 made any major improvement over version 5.0 ? Most improtantly how good is map data now with version 6.0 ?

heybhouse

Whatever happened to OCN5? Can folks still buy it even though it won't be upgraded?

dx51v

OCN6 is coming !

JakeRich

Infogation Odyssey Mobile (reviewed here.

Pros:

* Excellent GUI
* Amazingly quick, accurate routing/re-routing
* Good POI database
* Full Featured
* Pleasant voice
* Novel, logical data entry setup
* Novel pricing scheme
* Three day demo mode available

Cons:

* No waypoints (but the speed of routing makes the workaround very easy)
* Operation on VGA devices is awkward at best

Alan Calan

Which, if any, programs take advantage of VGA and what about traffic reports, which I believe Tom Tom gives you. I imagine the updates are thought the phone but then you must be able to link the phone to the Axim, which is not something every company does. I don't think most Verizon phones will link to the X51v.

jimbo32

My biggest complaint about ALL PPC GPS systems is the lousy screen PDAs use. They are not designed for use in bright sunlight, unlike most dedicated GPS systems.

heybhouse

Anyone know anything about VITO's GPS? They have maps no ne else does but I hadn't heard of their GPS software before.

JakeRich

Originally Posted by jimbo32

My biggest complaint about ALL PPC GPS systems is the lousy screen PDAs use. They are not designed for use in bright sunlight, unlike most dedicated GPS systems.

Have you tried a glare reducing screen protector? I use GPS with my X50v all the time and the screen is just fine. In fact, in bright sunlight, it's actually better if the sun is directly on the screen. The low sun angles in the winter cause the light to go across the screen, highlighting the dust. But that's a problem with any screen.

heybhouse

Originally Posted by dx51v

OCN6 is coming !

I thought OCN was discontinued (or was that just for Europe)?
Actually, according to their site, they're done: http://www.oncoursenavigator.com/for...&f=5&p=1#m4716

player911

I use iGO...

And here is my beef.

Coming from iGuidance v3.

I really like iGuidance v3 but I'm finding I like iGO better. iGO is very graphical and mostly eye candy. I was always a 2D buff until I found iGO. Motion is very fluid and you can use the D-Pad to rotate the map and zoom in and out.

Also there is a View button which is very handy. Tapping it cycles through 3 views. One is standard first person view, second is ???, and third is a completely zoomed out 2D which just shows the entire route, which is nice because you can get your sense of direction down.

Another thing I noticed is that it isn't sold with US maps, but will work if you have compatible maps. And to change states to find a destination, you have to click "Change Country" button. (In EUROPE, states = countries, kinda)

Another thing is that iGO will remember your route and current location on power off. So if your battery dies or you just decide to turn off your Axim while your driving long distances... you can power on the unit and your current route will be saved and your last GPS position (which gets updated once your GPS gets a signal.)

You can also minimize iGO to the System Tray.

Other then those differences it works much like iGuidance.
Some reasons to stick with iGuidance would be that I think that the voice guided directions are a bit more helpful ("Drive 100 miles").

Also iGuidance has local routes (backroads). The wierd thing is that iGO has a checkmark allowing/disallowing highways. Unchecking Highways (should be local) will turn up completely different paths then iGuidance's local routes. This sucks because I have to drive through downtown regularly and avoiding the highways downtown is faster. iGO had me going crazy routes that strayed from the best path.

I think iGuidance has better local (no highway) navigation.

Also I like iGuidance because it would tell you when to exit, where iGO tells you to "Merge Right"... but driving on the highway for miles, you normally hear "Merge Left"... "Merge Left"... "Merge Left"... "Merge Right"... "When Possible make a U-Turn"

Basically iGO has too much added vocals that aren't needed. Just tell me to "Keep on highway for next 50 miles"... then shut up until I'm 5 miles away from my exit.

I've noticed that iGO doesn't say exit numbers like iGuidance. iGO tells you the name of the exit... but that isn't helpful when you don't know where you are. If you need to take exit 10... and your at exit 5... that lets the driver know that you are 5 exits away.

All in all I really like iGuidance. I also really like iGo. iGo is really fancy and it does the job. I always keep a copy of iGuidance for backup because I know I can trust iGuidance.

Conclusion? Well I haven't launched iGuidance since I installed iGo. iGo's maps are state wide can can be launched just by copying the files into the maps directory. This is nice because you don't have to "Create a map" like iGuidance. I keep the US maps stored on my 8gb CF card and just copy over the maps I use the most.


Pictures here

gibhenry

Originally Posted by heybhouse

Anyone know anything about VITO's GPS? They have maps no ne else does but I hadn't heard of their GPS software before.

Well, Vito's SmartMap shows almost NO detail--nothing but a few very major highways (no names or numbers) and consequently, of course, no route guidance at all. Furthermore, I wasn't able to get it to recognize my GPS, either automatically or manually, whereas Mapopolis and Odyssey had no such problem. (No, I didn't have two GPS programs running at the same time.)

With Vito's map, you'd get an idea of what county you're in, and maybe one or two nearby major cities, but not smaller towns or much of anything else. Cheers,

__________________
Gib Henry

--Mac and i-mate Jasjar (HTC Universal)