Ostia 7 mini-review
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 8:41 am
I'm evaluating navigation programs for my iPaq. The folks over at Pharos actually provide a 30-day demo but it only took me 2 hours to figure out it's not worth it.
Equipment:
Ipaq 5450
Ram Mount cradle with power and 9-pin serial (recommended)
Etrex Legend with Serial cable
Pros:
Pretty graphics
Large buttons
GPS was dead on (when it worked)
3D 'bird's eye' view
Cons:
Zoom -
click on a tiny icon to pop-up a slider to zoom in or out
or wait 3 seconds and it will zoom out one notch
Routing - Horrid unless you like the highways.
A 13 mile trip took 7 stop points to force the quickest route. Mappoint did it right the first time. My other choices were to take a toll road or the fastest route it thought which was 20 plus turns on surface streets. The real quickest route it 3 turns.
Errors in map. It put my house at the wrong end of the street. A street which has been there since 1989. It put my work at the wrong end of the street also, there for over 15 years.
major oops
So, I decided to go the Post Office which is 5 miles away from me. I put the Ipaq in the cradle and fired up Otsia. It complained about the GPS signal not being there until the Etrex got a fix. Then each second the GPS icon would go from Red to Green which apparently means it's loosing the signal. Impossible as I had a lock on 10 satellites and was accurate to 12 feet.
So, it then put up a pop-up about the previous stops. I told it to go away it came back. I told it to go away. It came back again and again and again. I told it clear all stops and then it spent the next 3 minutes "recalculating route". A soft reset fixed it.
After rebooting I started it up again. The GPS was already locked in so no complaints but the icon still flashed. So, I started driving. The map looks really nice and the position on the map was right. Then 3 miles into the trip all the roads dissappeared! It still kept tracking my position on a blank screen but no amount of fiddling could get the road back. I arrive at the Post-Office and turn it off.
Finishing my postal errands I get back in the car and the roads are still gone so I perform a soft reset. Yeah the roads are back. The ride back was uneventful and it worked fine.
For a 30 day trial of ostia go to:
http://pharosgps.ws/dlst.htm
For the maps and registration go to:
http://www.pharosgps.com/mobile2market
I'm thinking of trying CoPilot next. If you have it let me know how you like it. PM me.
Equipment:
Ipaq 5450
Ram Mount cradle with power and 9-pin serial (recommended)
Etrex Legend with Serial cable
Pros:
Pretty graphics
Large buttons
GPS was dead on (when it worked)
3D 'bird's eye' view
Cons:
Zoom -
click on a tiny icon to pop-up a slider to zoom in or out
or wait 3 seconds and it will zoom out one notch
Routing - Horrid unless you like the highways.
A 13 mile trip took 7 stop points to force the quickest route. Mappoint did it right the first time. My other choices were to take a toll road or the fastest route it thought which was 20 plus turns on surface streets. The real quickest route it 3 turns.
Errors in map. It put my house at the wrong end of the street. A street which has been there since 1989. It put my work at the wrong end of the street also, there for over 15 years.
major oops
So, I decided to go the Post Office which is 5 miles away from me. I put the Ipaq in the cradle and fired up Otsia. It complained about the GPS signal not being there until the Etrex got a fix. Then each second the GPS icon would go from Red to Green which apparently means it's loosing the signal. Impossible as I had a lock on 10 satellites and was accurate to 12 feet.
So, it then put up a pop-up about the previous stops. I told it to go away it came back. I told it to go away. It came back again and again and again. I told it clear all stops and then it spent the next 3 minutes "recalculating route". A soft reset fixed it.
After rebooting I started it up again. The GPS was already locked in so no complaints but the icon still flashed. So, I started driving. The map looks really nice and the position on the map was right. Then 3 miles into the trip all the roads dissappeared! It still kept tracking my position on a blank screen but no amount of fiddling could get the road back. I arrive at the Post-Office and turn it off.
Finishing my postal errands I get back in the car and the roads are still gone so I perform a soft reset. Yeah the roads are back. The ride back was uneventful and it worked fine.
For a 30 day trial of ostia go to:
http://pharosgps.ws/dlst.htm
For the maps and registration go to:
http://www.pharosgps.com/mobile2market
I'm thinking of trying CoPilot next. If you have it let me know how you like it. PM me.