Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best product for low price, February 3, 2005
I've been waiting to review this product.
In determining which GPS add-on to buy, you think about few factors: hardware, software and connectivity.
1. Hardware
a. Form - this receiver is tiny - at 1/3 size of your my ipaq 6315, it's easy to bring around for hiking, and for putting it on the car dashboard without having it sliding around.
b. Reception - I have a Garmin etrex Vista ($350 when I bought) -for hiking (and sometimes for driving though not suitable). My Garmin had to show the startup screen for 15-30sec switching on, before haivng to wait for ANOTHER 30-60sec to locate the satellites. This is really horrible when you're lost and looking for direction. The tiny Belkin takes less than 20 seconds from switch on to finding myself on the map in the ipaq - IMPRESSIVE! And when I switch off and on within the same minute (warm start), I can get my location within 5 seconds! The Garmin would have taken near to a minute!
2. Software
I've used the Hertz Neverlost system - which is user-friendly and accurate. Now, this one is almost as good! It's one of those case where the company has already written a good program and want to sell it for few more bucks after having it stripped down.
a. voice command - clear enough to hear using my ipaq speaker while driving. It prompts you at the right moment (some times so accurate it's scary). For example, it'd prompt you to keep left or right to prevent you from steering to the wrong lane on a highway. And this happens just about or before you see the overhead signs! When I exit a highway, there were some tricky spots where there are two small roads about 20-40 ft apart, and it will pass the first one before telling me to "turn right".
b. Input - One thing I may fault is the input process. As in most GPS, you need to type in City, followed by Street, and number. But in this case you have to key City, wait for it to search (about 10-30s), and then input the street (which takes a bit longer), and then the number. After which when you click "NAV" to find the route, it may take as long as 30s! This is rather time consuming, but considering many PocketPC mapping programs (e.g. MS Pocket Map) do not have routing feature, this is quite good.
c. Points of Interest (POI) - this program does not have many POI though. Tourist attractions are limited. But considering it's made for PPC, and there isn't much space for all these, I'm fine with it.
3. Connectivity between both (since we're talking about bluetooth).
a. considering you have wireless connection betw your ppc and the gps, it's really neat! And the connection once establish stays establish tightly. Transmission of signal is rather quick and as I mentioned earlier, I don't find too much lag in a way that would prevent me from getting on to the wrong road.
One trick though - always switch on/off your ipaq bluetooth before switching on/off the belkin receiver. Else, you may find your map freeze if you suddenly switch off your receiver.
Bonus:
The charging cable is neat with USB cable on one end, and comes with a cigarette lighter charger. So, the same cigarette lighter adapter can be used to charge my ipaq!
Overall, I'm very impressed, and I've found a significant good use of my ipaq (which is not only a phone/PDA, but also a GPS. The portability of this combination means I can move from cars to cars (without having a fixed in-car installation), and yet enjoy reasonably good direction/routing capability! I've tried driving with a laptop connected to GPS receiver, but that's extremely cumbersome compared to this!
ALthough the ipaq PPC screen is small, i find the voice command sufficient, and only at times take it up to view it.
Finally, I bought this for $149 at buy.com. I tried buying from Provantage but the item was lost in shipping and after two months, they've still not refund me the money although they've agreed to - customer service is horrible at Provantage!
Hope this helps!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome for Navig in Vancouver,BC and Seattle, WA, October 7, 2004
All I have to say that this is one of my best investments.
I use a compaq 4150 with the belkin. It can create routes, is precise to the exact intersection, tells the speed etc. It can recalculate routes, if you change your course.
In BC, we got places faster than the locals.
My wife played with it and got it. She has a hard time getting used to my toys, she liked it so much she went throught each item and learned it.
Things to watch out for. your ipaq, or dell axim. from time to time might not detect Blue tooth devices. You can just reset it. A good way to avoid problems is to exit the software and the stop bluetooth.
Please also buy some velrow circle to attach to your dash.
You might want to also buy atleast a 128MB storage card for saving the maps. I have a 256 MB, so now I never have to download maps.
One huge caveat -- You might have to buy this toy to your significant other
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Works well as long as you don't drain the battery completely, March 22, 2005
This was a very good unit and helped me a lot while it worked. But I left the unit on once in my car to compeletely drain the battery and now it won't work even after a complete recharge. The unit simply has stopped sending any GPS data to the PDA/laptop.
I would avoid it because it is only a matter of time before you will leave it on one day and that will be the end of it.
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