tlz

I have been considering getting into the PDA-GPS game for some time. Still undecided if I want to do it over using AAA and Street & Trips with detailed maps. Most folks on this forum would be in favor of PDA-GPS so please help convince me that I need to make the plunge. Let's use a trip I made last summer as an example.

Traveled from Central FL to Amish Country in Ohio - in and about 4-5 counties, then on to Flint, MI and from there to Columbus, OH then straight back to Central FL. I don't have much in the way of hardware questions, but the software issues are another matter. Thinking now of Mapopolis Navigator, Pocket Map Nav., or Routis 2004 and how they would handle this trip.

First of all, I would only be traveling with the PDA - no laptop computer. Since I occasionally leave the interstate for a nearby point of interest, I would need to have maps available for leaving the major highway for a short distance say, up to 10 miles. Once in Ohio, we just started traveling around the local small towns for things to see or visit. There were not pre- planned stops, just spur of the moment trips. The rest of the trip involved those preplanned stops.

I gather I would have to have a lot of SD memory tied up in maps. If you don't have the maps of the areas of interest - you have NO maps, correct? How hard is it to set something like this -up before starting out? How hard to setup along the way. Long question - your thoughts please (read- is it worth it?)

brandenpro

Its worth it if you buy the right software for your application. I think mapopolis would be hard because you need to know the counties of each place you want a map for. I love having GPS its the only thing I bought my axim for, then I found this site hehe. So the expense for just GPS was worth it to me and now I everything else I use it for is gravy.

suemccartin

Most people on here seem to agree that mapopolis is best for cities and other products better at long distance routes. I've only ever used mapopolis and while I think it's a great product any product is going to be very limited while pdas offer so few resources to run within.

Myself I kind of don't like the idea of having to map out your route and have a utility create maps for you as I hear you have to do with some packages. Makes it hard to be out on the road and suddenly decide to make a side trip you didn't count on when you made the maps.

With mapopolis you just load up all the maps on an SD/CF card and it loads what it needs dynamically. You can put in a street address and navigator will give you turn by turn voice directions and popup closeup windows. I don't have a lot of experience with the latest version 4 yet but on version three running on a 32/32 pda I did sometimes run into problems when navigating from one state into another, mapopolis confirms that 32 meg machines can sometimes have a few problems when a whole state worth of maps is loaded. You mentioned points of interest, that package is extra with mapopolis (and I didn't even see it listed yet for the latest version but I may be wrong on that). When I went to New Mexico most of the tourist attractions were on the maps but I often couldn't find them on the map till I was in the vicinity (memory issues probably on my old pda).

A pda setup with mapping software and a gps is a whole bunch cheaper than one of those dedicated automobile gps systems and it's much easier to load new maps on a pda setup than a dedicated system as well.

I use my setup constantly. I live in Pinellas County Florida and often have to go to Tampa, In which place I couldn't find my own backside in if I didn't have a good map or directions. You put in the address and it will take you there and will usually work off addresses input into your contact list for outlook (sometimes you have to fiddle with street names a bit to find out how they have it in the software, often if it's us 19 and aka 34th street you can only find it under us 19).

Driving in heavy traffic it's much nicer to have something telling you that your turn is five hundred feet ahead on the right rather than missing the turn because the street sign was microscopic, someone turned it around or just plain vandalized it so it isn't readable. You just have to rememeber that these packages are only as good as the maps and once your maps get to be a few years old the city may have closed off streets, built new ones, or put in a new highway or three so it's definetly something you should count on the fact that you have to put more money into it every couple of years. With most packages you buy one set of maps from one release and you don't get updates even if you buy a subscription, you always get the same release date maps until you pay again. In the case of mapopolis the software is free and you pay for the maps, they seem to be on top of bug fixes and improvements, there were at least four updates since february this year.

hocky98

You can also load the major highway map that is available for mapopolis to cover uncharted areas..but like you said, you can have it load maps dynamically as it needs to. But when I used this feature, I found it goes wild and loads all the maps which slows down everything.

srf506

I store all of the locations I need for a trip on a 256 meg CF card. I've used it on multiple leg trips (I fly between cities) and its a real convenient little tool to just hook it up, jump in the rental at 10PM in a strange city and navigate right to my hotel. There's lots of ways of doing the same job but I've really embraced this GPS stuff. If I could get get Aviation and marine maps for it I'd be in high cotton!

JimDantin

I use Mapopolis Navigator and I'm quite happy with it for both in-town and cross-country navigation.

If I'm planning a trip into a new area, I use Streets & Trips to identify all of the counties that I might be interested in. I add in the Major Roads maps for each state that I'll be travelling through. I copy all of those maps into a folder on my SD card. As an example, for a recent trip from Louisville KY to Charlotte NC (500 miles) I had 27 maps totalling 14 MB. I have over 550 maps on my SD card right now totalling 154 MB.

Identifying the counties and extracting them from the individual state ZIP files is a bit of a pain (Mapopolis has been promising some sort of utility to help with that chore) but I only need to do it for long-distance trips. I have all of my local area in a folder that I use for normal day-to-day travel, and for looking up addresses.

I also have all of the major road maps for the US and Canada in a folder (58 maps, 18 MB) so I can easily handle long-distance travel by just adding a few county maps as needed.

I've looked at a few other packages and they each have strong and weak points. Visit GPSPassion.com or PocketPCLouiville.com for reviews.

I use the mapping program constantly -- both with and without the GPS. It's one of the most beneficial applications that I have on my Axim.

cmms_axim

Yes you do. And to be specific you want cf gps not sd I/O gps. Why, cause the x5 dont support sd I/O get an x3 if you wanna go that route