Customer Reviews

The Blue Logger & Street Atlas USA 2006 or The Blue Logger & Street Atlas USA 2006 Handheld

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I bought the blue logger and both Street atlas 2005 and SA2005 HH for my Dell X50V. No problem with the Blue Logger GPS but my complaints are as follows:

1. Delorme did not include the Blue Logger Manager software on the HH. Now they want to sell it separately for additional $39. Very Weird marketing strategy indeed.

2. The software for the pocket PC is very difficult to use, not very intuitive. It seems the hand held software was developed as an afterthought from the software for the pc. It is poorly designed, and appeared was not fully tested by normal users prior to releasing to market.

3. It is very cumbersome and slow to determine a route. Even with a 620 MHz Axim, it is slow. Worse yet, the route is often wrong. FOr example, this afternoon I use SA2005 to determine a route to a friend's house. Had I followed that route, I would come to a dead end street and have to back track about 10 miles to get to another correct route to my destination. Luckily, I decided to use my paper map. Later, I tried Microsoft Mapping on the internet and it actually gave me the correct routing. Last week for another location, SA2005 found the wrong location for a given address which would take me about 4 miles off. Luckily, I knew where it was and ignored the routing from SA2005 HH.

4. Many other mapping softwares for HH will allow one to use it with 1 hand and often with the finger. But not with SA2005 HH. After 2 weeks of using it, I found myself going back to my old paper map. For example, if I had not calculated a route and just simply use the GPS and map to travel, the software only show the street I was on but no name given and no street name shown for upcoming cross streets. It does not help when you are lost.

5. SA2005 maps seems to be several years old and not very up to date. I guess that's why Delorme does not want to clearly advertise this issue.

I am seriously considering giving up SA2005 and consider this as my $50 learning mistake, and looking at Microsoft Street & Trip 2005 or later in 1Q 2005, IGuidance who is supposed to have the latest map.

I am not alone in this as several other users have also complained on delorme user forum. I wish I had read that forum before buying Delorme software. Well, Live and Learn.

I agree with all the other feedback saying this product is faulty. The on/off button is terrible. It takes 5 tries to turn the unit off. After 5 months of using this, the unit would no longer "talk" with the satellites. I sent it back to DeLorme. It tested bad. Now I have waited 6 weeks for a replacement that is backordered. Customer service rep will not refund your purchase after 30 days! The software claims it will compute driving routes for you...but it will crash your PDA instead. I had to buy INav IGuidance software (which is outstanding) to get software that will actually compute road routes for me. I would not recommend this product to anyone. It has been a complete waste of money for me.

It is the year 2005. The 21st Century. We've put men on the moon. We've launched space probes to the edges of our solar system. We can even remotely drive little vehicles along the surfaces of other planets.

But we can't design a simply on/off button.

The on/off button for the Blue Logger is one of the most insanely stupid things I've ever encountered. Some mentally-challenged engineer somewhere decided that you have to hold the button 2-4 seconds to turn it on, and 2-4 seconds to turn it off.

It doesn't *sound* that difficult to do, but in practice it is infuriating, especially when you are trying to turn it on but end up turning it off. Right now the Blue Logger is sitting in front of me and I cannot turn it off. It simply will not turn off.

Oh, and I've had lots of problems connecting it to my Bluetooth adapter, and have yet to get Street Atlas USA 2005 to recognize it.

I am trying to get this to work for the last 2 weeks ... unfortunately without success. I bought the bundle #3 (Bluelogger & Street Atlas 2005 & Street Atlas 2005 Handheld). The installation went fine, but I had problems in hooking up to bluetooth. I had to reset my HP iPAQ 2215 several times in this process and my IBM T30 (2.4 GHz and with 1GB RAM) was very slow ... not sure why this was.
Once I got the laptop to work, I took the Blue Logger out for a trip and downloaded the trip when I returned. Well, I coudn't make sense out the data the Blue Logger logged - the waypoints were almost all over the map. This was not the route I took.

I am still within the 30-day risk-free guarantee and try to return it next week.

I am very disappointed in this product. I purchased the Blue Logger to use with a new Dell Axim X51v (which I purchased to use with the Blue Logger). I found that I could not make a Blue Tooth Connection between the Blue Logger and the handheld computer. I contacted Delorme & was told "At this time we do not offer any support or updates for Windows Mobile 5.0. Hopefully in the future we will be able to offer updates for compatibility but currently there is no timeframe." What a ripoff. Delorme has a product that is not even compatible with the present PC Handheld operating system.

I have also found that I cannot upload routes created on Street Atlas 2006 to the hand held. Basically I have a little electronic map with no functionality.

I bought this the day it first became available in 2006 and have been using it on and off ever since because I always thought the problem was the bluetooth connection on my computer. Now that I have a newer computer, I see that the problem truly has been with blue logger and not my computer.

As a logger, it is fairly difficult to use. If you don't get all the settings exactly right in the blue logger manager software, it will give you odd results. Or none at all. The manager software is terrible.

When it's working, it performs as expected. The tricky thing always seems to be to get it to the point where it will actually perform - either as a logger or as a serial device for Street Atlas. Just don't turn it or street atlas off, or you have to fiddle with it again.

This has probably been one of the must frustrating techno-gadget experiences of my life, and I'm usually pretty good at figuring these kinds of things out. I was an early adopter of a unit that was fairly new technology at the time. Now every smart phone comes with GPS and bluetooth that just works. The unit is still being sold today. Sometimes, it's nice to have something that just logs. I'm sure there are newer gadgets out there that do a far superior job of logging to this outmoded and no-longer relevant unit. Save yourself a world of hassle and buy something other than this.

I have bought several Blue Loggers along with some other hardware and software, notably GPS PostPro, DeLorme's software that will postprocess GPS data to make more accurate positional measurements.

The point of postprocessing is to use data acquired over minutes or hours, for example by the Blue Logger, and do calculations after the fact comparing these data to data logged at fixed GPS observing stations around the USA or world. You can measure a point to a few inches, when things go well.

If you spend thousands of dollars you can get a nice GPS receiver and software for doing this, like surveyors do. The Blue Logger and PostPro let you do the same thing, though not quite as precisely, for a few hundred dollars. You can't use just any GPS receiver - it has to record information separately for every GPS satellite.

So, the Blue Logger is the only product out there that can do this unless you spend thousands.

On the plus side is the fact that this is even possible. And, the Logger feels like a nice solid little device.

On the minus side, though, Blue Loggers just barely work. They're probably the most unreliable and difficult electronic product I've ever tried to use. They keep malfunctioning. To make matters worse, I bet other companies that might have tried to put similar products out there would not want to now, because these things are convincing consumers that postprocessing is difficult.

I keep using them because I really want the results, but I curse their unreliability every time I do. And this would have been such a perfect product, if they'd made them work right.

I gave them a moderate rating because it's great that there is any product out there at all for doing this. If there were competing products I'd have to give Blue Loggers a thumbs down completely.
If you want to see bright people struggling bravely with a cursed and evil product, go look at the Blue Logger Receiver forum at delorme.com.

I have used this device for over a year. It is an acceptable GPS device but loses the logging function whenever it is turned off. To enable logging, you then have to use the computer software to enable it. This makes it useless as logger unless you set it and immediately use it. If you turn it off, it loses the data. I have returned it to Delorme for service and was assured it functions perfectly. I assume they are referrring to the GPS function. It is no better than a paper weight as a logger. If you want one, buy mine. Delorme turned me down when I offered to sell it to them at half price.

i have so for used inav iguidance,mapopolis,navigon navigator 5 and The Blue Logger & Street Atlas USA .out of all these The Blue Logger & Street Atlas USA is the worst and inav iguidance 2.1.1 is the best .blue logger gps hardware is good but v impractical to use bcuz of its strange onoff button....
i will not recommend it to anyone....simply waste of time and money

The first peron to review this incorrectly stated that it doesn't come with software for handhleds. That person chose to buy it without and save some $$ and then complained about having to pay extra for it because he/she bought the wrong software package. Delorme did the right thing and offered us options. I just ordered mine and I have no plans on using with a HH so I'm very happy that I didn't have to buy the HH software. Just don't be dumb and read what you are buying before you buy it. Nemerous people have highly recommended this to me, although I have heard that MS Mappoint has better maps and should be used instead when you have it as an option. Storing 50,000 data points without a connection to a computer is awesome. I will be able to take the unit with me on a bike ride and analize the workout later hopefully looking at the route, elevation, etc. Too bad it is only in Yellow...