| BaldEagle |
Has anyone had experience with this or something similar?
http://www.delorme.com/earthmate/configurations.asp
I am considering using a our laptop as a navigation for the wife's car and a Motorhome that we will be purchasing and wonder if anyone here has had any knowledge of these products.
GPS receiver, connector and Street Atlas 2003 software for only $129.
I have found that with the navigation system in our MDX we have decided that we will not be without one for future trips. My wife's new car purchased 2 weeks after we got the MDX only has 6000 miles on it, the MDDX has 15000. Every trip we have made in the last year we have taken the MDX because of the navigation system or needing the AWD or needing the extra space.
I may even use this in the MDX if the long overdue upgrade this fall does not happen. |
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| xcel |
Hi BaldEagle:
___The Delorme’ HW/SW is on the very low end as far as a quality system given what is currently available. For a Laptop, you could own a much higher quality NAVI setup with the i.Trek serial or USB mouse based receiver using the latest SiRF IIe/LP chipset and possibly i.Guidance’s Intellinav SW. This HW/SW can probably be bundled for ~ $195.00 including a free Acron vent mount and shipping. The i.Trek mouse based GPS receiver and the i.Guidance SW reviews can be seen over at www.Gpspassion.com when you have the opportunity to visit. I would also consider MS’s own Streets and Trips 2003 as its POI is phenomenal and can be had for a small $10 to $15.00 after rebate from a Sam’s Club near you. That is if the Hot Deal MS S&T’s threads of the past are still in force.
___I currently have an MDX Panavise PDA mount ordered for my Axim and Krusell case which will make a very nice platform for the i.Trek and Mapopolis solution that I am using currently. At least I hope the PDA mount and wiring I have planned will work well?
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net |
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| dtomlinson |
My 1st navigation system was a Delorme based laptop system that I used in our motorhomes for last 10 years or so, with several upgrades. I have used several Garmin GPS units in my pickup (currently Streetpilot Deluxe). Now with our new MDX w/ nav., all vehicles have navigation. I also have a small Garmin Map 76 unit that I use on my Goldwing and Snowmobile. I never leave home without a nav. system.
They all have different features that I like. The MDX system is the most soffisticated, but I like some features of the Garmin Streetpilot, such as when you are driving along, it shows the upcoming streets and intersections, even when you are not following a route plan. The Delorme Street Atlas with my Gateway 15.5" screen laptop is great in the motorhome with its big screen and lots of details, but would be very cumbersome in a car or pickup. |
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| robrecht |
quote:
Originally posted by dtomlinson
The Delorme Street Atlas with my Gateway 15.5" screen laptop is great in the motorhome with its big screen and lots of details, but would be very cumbersome in a car or pickup.
You may want to look into similar add-ons for Palm handheld computers. The Garmin iQue 3600 is going to be releaseed soon. It is an integrated PDA (personal digital assistant) and GPS unit. It will have a nice big screen (for a PDA) and will have accessories for use in cars. It will also be able to plan routes to addresses that are stored in your contacts so it really does integrate PDA and GPS functions. |
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| bingster |
| robrecht, I agree with xcel. I'd look into what he said. I bought a i.trek CompactFlash GPS receiver and the iGuidance GPS navigation software, and mated that with a Compaq ipaq that I'd already had. Works pretty well, even though the startup could be quicker -- it takes about 5-10 minutes sometimes to get a lock on the satellites. Other than that, works pretty well. |
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| eodok |
I did not order the Navi when I bought my MDX :banghead: , so started looking for an alternative. Ended up getting the Holux GPS CF card. The beauty of it is it fits perfectly to my iPAQ and a laptop.
Software is a problem on the laptops. I have a couple of different navigation software on the iPAQ, the one I like most is Pocketmap navigator. Truly a work of art. I have the vehicle mount for the pocket PC and works pretty good.
I'm extremely happy with the GPS card, sat lock is under a few seconds if the device has not moved much from the previous location. I think it keeps the last coordinates on NVRAM so boot really quicky.
Laptop software is really hard to come by. Garmin software only works with Garmin receivers. I have tried several, DeLorme's Street Atlas 2003 is so far the best one. It does voice recognition and navigation. Maps are not really good, though. They're not using Navtech, but the good thing is you can add routes and name them. That's what I had to do for my neighborhood.
I can take screenshots if anyone is interested. |
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| xcel |
Hi Eodok:
___As far as the MDX’s NAVI is concerned; it has so many items going for it and one extremely glaring problem. 1999 based maps on the 01/02’s (only an 8 Sat GPS receiver if I remember correctly as well) and 01/02 based maps on the 03! If you were to pick up a Road Atlas in the local bookstore and you had the choice of a 1999 Road Atlas for $0.50, a 2001 Road Atlas for $2.50, or the latest May of 03 Road Atlas for $5.99, which would you buy? The 99 Atlas is as good as toilet paper IMO although it will probably do well enough to get you to most anywhere in the US. The 01 Road Atlas is a bit better but it is not as accurate as the May of 03 based Road Atlas. Again, which would you purchase? I can only hope the X NAVI owners get some relief from this inexplicable problem very shortly! After that, what about the next update? Will it arrive in 2006 or will it be so far out of date that today’s NAVI owners will simply get screwed for the rest of the life of the vehicle?
___As far as the PDA based GPS HW is concerned, I believe the SiRF IIe/LP based i.Trek mouse receiver to be the best GPS receiver available currently. The Ultra CF’s based on the same Sirf chipset have the annoying lag, the std. CF’s based on the same chipset have some power problems with various PDA’s at various battery levels (the Dell Axim being one of them :(), and the Bluetooth Receivers also based on the latest SiRF chipset have a type of lowered sensitivity problem as posted here.quote:
The first comment is to note that on average, the Bluetooth GPS receivers tested here slightly under perform compared to the "mouse" GPS receivers tested. The first comment is to note that on average, the Bluetooth GPS receivers tested here slightly under perform compared to the "mouse" GPS receivers tested here. There are also some fairly strong variations from one "run" to the other, something I didn't notice with the "mouse" GPS tests. Hard to explain. Could it be due to the power management that needs to factor in battery constraints or then to Bluetooth interference (very different frequency though)? There are also some fairly strong variations from one "run" to the other, something I didn't notice with the "mouse" GPS tests. Hard to explain. Could it be due to the power management that needs to factor in battery constraints or then to Bluetooth interference (very different frequency though)?
___I owned a Holux GM270 for a few days but it was for all intents and purposes, unusable for any longer period of time unfortunately. If I were in the market for a CF based GPS receiver again, I would most certainly consider the GlobalSat BC-307 given it costs just $120.00 from Semson’s. This price not only includes the CF based GPS receiver but includes an external antenna as well as a PCMCIA adapter for a laptop.
___In my own use, the i.Trek mouse based GPS receiver with the Dell Axim (400 MHz version) has been nothing but solid. The TTF warm is usually in the 10 – 20 second area. Hot is darn near instantaneous and I have both my SD and CF slot available for memory and WiFi respectively.
___On the SW side of things, I use Mapopolis 4.1x almost exclusively although I do have the latest i.Guidance available whenever I want to run it through its paces. The Rerouting speed and accuracy of Mapopolis cannot be beat although i.Guidance has a prettier and more intelligent GUI IMHO. The reason for these (2) SW packages being on the top of any PDA based NAVI setup is that they both use Navtech maps (Mapopolis’ Navtech R5 maps are just 1 month old!) unlike PMN and they work very very well. PMN has just made some recent strides with their own latest 2.20 Beta but even with that, there are still many shortcomings in comparison to two of the best and relatively inexpensive rivals in Mapopolis and i.Guidance. The last point to make about i.Guidance is that it works on both your PDA and a Laptop from the same package if that helps some find an all around solution. I mentioned MS Streets and Trips 2003 above because its POI data base is second to none as far as finding something of relevance quickly. This is one area where Delorme’s own Street Atlas has the advantage on number of POI’s with its data set of 4.2 million but appears to be not nearly as intuitive from my reads. I have not tried it for myself so take that sentence with a grain of salt. MS’s S&T’s 2003 is a very poor NAVI solution given a ton of other reasons but if you want to find something (POI) while on the road, it’s the SW I would use. It’s too bad we don’t have access to the complete MS S&T 2003 or Delorme Street Atlas 2003’s database for the PDA. That would make a very well rounded package with i.Guidance and/or Mapopolis handling the true NAVI portion of the equation!
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net |
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