Hard to use, then it broke.
OK, here's the deal. I bought this to get a portable GPS that I could play with on my laptop. I recieved it, spent an hour trying to figure out how it worked (because on windows it masqueraded as a serial mouse, had to edit the registry to make it work, which was inconvenient, and on linux it was as convoluted a process as these things usually are#. It worked ok for a few...
Quite sensitive - maintains a fix indoors in places where we've not gotten any handheld dedicated GPS units to keep a fix.
Works out-of-box with Ubuntu, though the kernel puts it at /dev/gps0 instead of the more common /dev/ttyUSB0.
Under Windows XP, it keeps coming up as "Microsoft serial Ballpoint", and the GPS NMEA data coming from it gets interpreted as mouse movements and button clicks. The fix (although not easy to accomplish with mouse moving on its own...) is to open up Device Manager, and just after plugging in the GPS when the ballpoint device first appears in Device Manager, right-click it and select 'Disable'. Doing this over remote desktop or VNC is tons easier as you can keep the mouse cursor in one place... GlobalSat has newer Windows drivers, one explicitly saying it's for the ballpoint problem, but the only way I could fix it was to disable the ballpoint in device manager.
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Item works fine and performs perfectly. But...I had to set the baud rate to 4800 to get it to work. I didn't see anything that said to do this first, but a quick google search pulled up the info.
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I installed this device on a tablet running Windows 7. I downloaded the Windows 7 driver from Globalsat's .tw website because I couldn't get the driver on the provided CD (XP and Vista only) to work with Globalsats GPS utility (Mini-whatever). I never did get the GPS utility to work, but after a couple of hours of frustration, I downloaded MS Streets & Trips (trial version), and the device connected flawlessly. During my attempts to use the GPS utility, I did the firmware upgrade, but I'm not sure that I needed that.
The device is very sensitive. Even indoors, it picks up signals from 7 or 8 satellites. In that respect, it seems to be much more sensitive than a hand-held GPS I bought a couple years ago (and have since ruined).
The instruction manual (on-line only) is poorly written and out of date. Arguably, following the manual instructions will lead you further astray than if you wing it. Notwithstanding all the flaws, the device a good buy.
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Bought this inexpensive GPS to use with my computer on our sailboat with electronic nautical charts. I first tested at home, and it set up fine. Our home has a metal roof, so I found it locked in to a signal better if I took my computer outside but once locked in worked fine back inside. I've also gone ahead and bought MS Streets and Maps and have been using that software with the GPS and the laptop in the car with no problems. So far, it seems to do the job fine.
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I got this unit yesterday and spent a couple of hours searching Google, the manufacturers forum, and the USB driver manufacturer's site to assemble an appropriate set of drivers and utilities for Windows 7 home professional 64-bit. Bottom line on installation is that you need perseverance and a fair amount of technical knowledge. Having said that the unit appears to be extremely sensitive. Right now I'm in my office and its tracking 11 satellites. This performance is significantly better than my Garmin 765. Here are some tips for potential installers.
1. The blue LED which indicates unit status is actually inside the plastic housing and is not visible in bright light. I initially installed the unit in my notebook outside and was perplexed by the references to the blue LED. Once I carried it inside I noticed that the LED was flashing indicating that the unit was actually navigating. At that point I had not succeeded in getting the navigator to communicate with the notebook and was considering returning it to Amazon as a dud.
2. The supplied miniCDU monitoring utility does not automatically connect to the navigator. You must hit the connect button on the upper left hand side of the GUI. This utility also seems to default to COM1 as the input port every time you start it rather than the actual port being emulated by the navigator.
So far my pros are: high sensitivity, ease of integration with Google Earth (once I got it working), high quality construction, and extremely good value for money. My cons: this is not a plug-and-play device, you need to work quite hard to get it installed and eliminate the side effects (like the bouncing cursor mentioned elsewhere in these reviews).
I read the other reviews here before I bought the item and given that I was forewarned about installation I'm very pleased with it so far. I update this if I get any problems or failures in the future.
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OK, here's the deal. I bought this to get a portable GPS that I could play with on my laptop. I recieved it, spent an hour trying to figure out how it worked (because on windows it masqueraded as a serial mouse, had to edit the registry to make it work, which was inconvenient, and on linux it was as convoluted a process as these things usually are#. It worked ok for a few hours #accuracy wasn't great, ~20m).
Then it stopped working.
I did what was suggested in the forums, and on the FAQs. No good. I contacted support, and they had me do all those things again. Now I have to pay for shipping to send it back, and because it was purchased through Amazon, they may not replace it. And the return instructions say:
"--All products deemed Out-of Warranty are subject to a minimum $35.00 USD charge, excluding freight.
--You may be subject to a $15 service fee and return shipping costs on items found not to be defective."
So it could double the cost of the thing.
NOT recommended.
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Unlike a previous USB GPS Dongle I purchased, this one installed and worked perfectly with my marine navigation software (Fugawi) without any issues. It properly defaults to 4800 baud and finds satellites quickly, and maintains accurate location data. I would highly recommend this unit for laptop users.
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The GPS stick does what is advertised. Loading the driver was easy. I found in the directions where the Baud rate should be set to 4800 so that was no problem. I have purchased Canmore products that was supposed to do similar things but could not make the Canmore products work and the factory did not make good on my calls for help. It is far better to go with a company that makes things that work and backs up their product.
The only reason I gave it a 4 star rating is that there where no surprises (everything worked) but there are no real frills either...
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I gave this product 3 stars as the average of the good and the bad. First, the good. I tried it initially on a Linux netbook. After downloading and installing gpsd, the receiver quickly initialized and I could read the stream of NMEA messages.
Now, the bad. After that success, I used the supplied mini-CD to install the drivers on an XP machine. After connecting the device, I opened the COM port with Hyperterm at 4800 baud 8-N-1. The device was putting out a data stream, but the characters were garbage. No baud or parity configurations produced an intelligible stream. Searching the web, I found suggestions to download other software to set the baud rate. This failed to produce good data. With more searching, I found a discussion in the users' forum about reflashing the device, and using yet another version of the driver. This also failed. A further comment suggested installing the unified driver, which finally yielded usable data at 4800 baud.
Once the interface was ironed out, the receiver was able to initialize quickly indoors. I have evaluated similar products that functioned just as well but worked with the provided drivers out of the box. While I understand the problem of replacing obsolete media, a prominent notice on the company's homepage would eliminate the installation hassles and improve the user experience greatly.
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I purchased this unit to use with a Linux notebook. I had previously installed both gpsd (the interface daemon) and gpsdrive (a GPS map application) on the machine. The ND-100 worked perfectly once plugged into the USB port. I haven't had much opportunity to use it, but it has worked well when I've needed it.
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