licenses tied to single PPC

08-08-05, 10:45 PM

I'm planning on upgrading my trusty old X5 within the next 6 months and I just purchased Outdoor Navigator to go along with my other GPS utilities. After reading the manual I saw that they tie the license to your unique device and if you change or upgrade you have to repurchase the activation code.

Any idea before I purchase a new device how many programs I may have to repurchase?
Seems like a bad way to do it with devices that are frequently replaced/upgraded.

On the plus side Maptech's customer support is excellent, they quickly fixed my issue with not being able to start Outdoor Navigator due to a corrupted database file.

08-08-05, 10:54 PM

Most lower cost PPC software is tied to the user name registered in the owner screen. Probably a quick way to test what software is tied to this would be to change your name, perform a soft reset and see what software says it isn't registered. Most software that is now disabled would probably work fine on a new PPC with your old registration code if you enter your name exactly as it is in your current PPC.

Some high end software is tied to specific machines for registration purposes, but many of these companies (but not all) will issue you a new registration if you contact them and explain that you upgraded your device.

Ivan Awfulitch · 08-09-05, 12:23 PM

Of all the software, including GPS that I have bought the only one that ties the software to the machine for life is Outdoor Navigator. Consider it a selling point when you sell or give the machine away. They do not under any conditon replace the code. Their reasoning is that you pay $20 for a lifetime of free topo maps and nautical charts, and the software on the PPC is free. Give the code to the new owner as it's useless to you on the new machine. On the plus side, it is a nice package. If you don't need nautical charts, you might consider Backcountry Navigator. I've been beta testing it and they've got it working almost perfectly now. It uses maps that are downloaded directly to the PPC from Terraserver for free. The nice part here is that you can get the maps anywhere you have internet access, and don't have to rely on a PC for map files. Create an account (free) and download the beta.

http://www.backcountrynavigator.com/...ategory/67/41/

dlweston · 08-09-05, 11:06 PM

Originally Posted by Ivan Awfulitch

Of all the software, including GPS that I have bought the only one that ties the software to the machine for life is Outdoor Navigator. Consider it a selling point when you sell or give the machine away. They do not under any conditon replace the code. Their reasoning is that you pay $20 for a lifetime of free topo maps and nautical charts, and the software on the PPC is free. Give the code to the new owner as it's useless to you on the new machine. On the plus side, it is a nice package. If you don't need nautical charts, you might consider Backcountry Navigator. I've been beta testing it and they've got it working almost perfectly now. It uses maps that are downloaded directly to the PPC from Terraserver for free. The nice part here is that you can get the maps anywhere you have internet access, and don't have to rely on a PC for map files. Create an account (free) and download the beta.

http://www.backcountrynavigator.com/...ategory/67/41/

This product looks cool. It looks much more advanced than Outdoor Navigator. Kind of makes me wish I would not have bought Memory-Map Navigator.

08-10-05, 01:00 PM

Originally Posted by Ivan Awfulitch

If you don't need nautical charts, you might consider Backcountry Navigator. I've been beta testing it and they've got it working almost perfectly now. It uses maps that are downloaded directly to the PPC from Terraserver for free. The nice part here is that you can get the maps anywhere you have internet access, and don't have to rely on a PC for map files. Create an account (free) and download the beta.

http://www.backcountrynavigator.com/...ategory/67/41/

:love: :approve: Tried it out...this program is awesome!! topo and sattelite maps downloaded on the fly, you just tell it what radius you want to download around what point (your present location or any point you give it AND you can search for locales, AND you can download POIs and GPXs for geocaching)
I gotta have this one!!!
Now if I could just get some time off work to go hiking....

Ivan Awfulitch · 08-10-05, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by cawinters

:love: :approve: Tried it out...this program is awesome!! topo and sattelite maps downloaded on the fly, you just tell it what radius you want to download around what point (your present location or any point you give it AND you can search for locales, AND you can download POIs and GPXs for geocaching)
I gotta have this one!!!
Now if I could just get some time off work to go hiking....

I've been using this for about 5 revisions and I have to say that when I've found a bug that caused problems they have corrected it very quickly. One of the latest releases caused the bluetooth card in my Toshiba to stop responding. They identified the problem and had a corrected version with other enhancements available in a few days. I don't know what their pricing structure will be but this does look like a must have topo program. I'll try to make sure that it gets a notice on the main Axim page when it goes commercial.

08-10-05, 04:51 PM

The only downside is it takes quite a while to download the data, especially if you have the photos enabled. A 2.5 * 2 mile download takes near 5 mb and probably ten minutes to download to your PPC even with DSL.