beakmyn

I bought Oncourse Navigator 4 from buygpsnow.com
Hardware
iPaq H5450 with BT manager Update 1.4.1.58 4-nov-2003
256 MB SD card
Globalstat BT-338 Bluetooth GPS


Going on a 600+ mile roundtrip from Rochester, NY to Granville, NY to Rutland, VT to Thorn's neighborhood.

Disclaimer:
Items marked with * will be fixed in version 5 due out in June

OnCourse Navigator is referenced as OCN
This is a work in progress.

1st impressions
In the package is 4 CDs
Disc 1/2 - setup, base maps of US and Canada
Disc 3/4 7 Pre-exported maps of the US and Canda

Convienently the Northeastern map (130 mb) covers the area I'll be traveling through.

I installed the software which consists of a MapExport program on the PC, the PPC program and a skin editor.

The install went well but I did have problems running the software (hanging during startup, etc). I would suggest performing a full backup of your PDA and then hard-resetting and install OCN first.

I then loaded the 130mb Northeastern US map to the SD card using map export. It took a really long time (10+ minutes)

I then fired up MapExport and put in the areas I would be travelling to and created a map segment of my route and sent it to the pda.

My hotel happens to be on rt 7. In version 4 you can't specify rt 7 only street names* The hotel isn't in the poi database either.

I started OCN and then went and mowed the lawn. OK I didn't really mow the lawn but the startup time was about 45-60 seconds*

<4/17/2004>
So, I made it to the hotel in one piece and I made pretty good time.

I entered in the address of where I wanted to go and after a few seconds it had decided on the route and I was on my way.

The PDA interface is a little awkward but once you get used to it it's not too bad. Entering an address isn't very fun with the phone layout, you can bring up a keyboard also.

Now on to the nitty gritty the navigating. It's great! I didn't have one glitch on the 300 mile trip. It warned me of upcoming turns without issue, depending on speed it would warn betwen 2 miles and 600 feet.

Once I got to near my destination I purposely took a wrong turn to make it re-route. Within a couple seconds it started prompting me with a new route. I decided to ignore it and it re-routed immediately suggesting a new route. I finally gave in after 3 wrong turns and it quickly got me back on track.

__________________
It's not Intelligent Design, it's peer pressure.

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