kreat

So I drove aroune with it a little yesterday - my thoughts on autorouting: The unit seemed pretty accurate most of the time with regards to distance to turns. It was a little confusising at times - it would tell me to veer right or left and I'm not sure why. I'm driving straight downa 6 lane road and it wants me to veer left before I turn left at a light. It also seems to prefer highway names over street names. i.e. one of the main roads through town - Academy Blvd is also CO-83 for a ways. The unit will refer to the road as CO-83 - this results in directions like "Merge onto N Academy Blvd" at the intersection where CO-83 and Academy seperate - yet the whole time you are simply going straight on the same road and you never merge with anything. Thankfully the turn arrow actually tells you to go straight or it might get a little confusing. I've also noticed it takes a couple of minutes for the unit to get a good accuracy - if you start driving before that it might be as much as 500ft off resulting in bad directions. Some complaints about the display - mainly how it chooses to display information. You can customize what information is displayed on your screen during autoroating. Yesterday I was playing with Distance to Turn, Time to Turn, ETA, Road currently on. Some things they could improve on - each field centers the information. Thats fine until either the information doesn't fit or you have too many fields displayed - in which case all you see is the center of something. So instead of seeing something like 6:45:55 for your eta you might only see 45:5, or instead of N. Academy Blvd - you see cademy for your street name. I think it would be nive if they left justified - the first part of the data is prolly more usefull - at least to me. The unit works great however - definitely worth the money so far and has been easy to figure out.

The card slot is located in the same place - under the batteries. I am still a little torn on that - I think I'd rather have the card internal like that than in an external slot and maybe being under the batteries will offer some protection if the unit is dropped. I did forget to mention - the unit is very easy to see with sunglasses on. I've used my friends iQUE and when driving with sunglasses I sometimes had a hard time seeing anything on its screen. We are going to try and find a cache this weekend - me with teh iWAY - him with his iQUE - should be interesting:) The Mapcreate software also had streets in some newer neighborhoods around here so that impressed me as well. The most recent software on my friends iQUE doesn't have those streets yet. I haven't had too many issues with the file transfer yet other than these additional files ending up on my card and I don't know what they are - something ending in a .at5 is a large file and eats up alot of space.

So - the unit arrived last night - I didn't get a lot of time to play with it but I did get it up and working. I am a relative GPSr newbie so bear that in mind:) First off - what's in teh box - The unit itself suction cup mount wrist strap 128 MB MMC card LEI Card Reader Manuals The MapCreate Turn by Turn software The unit itself seems pretty sturdy - I'm sure I could drop this and feel pretty good that it would survive the fall. Buttons seem a good size to me. The screen also seems to be a good size. Suction cup mount: it gets a rough ride in my miata - a little bouncy - I had it pop off once while I was driving in to work this morning - but it was also very cold so that may have had something to do with it. No directions on how to assemble the mount however - it came 5 peices with 4 screws. Wrist strap - I'm not sure where I'm supposed to attach it - there is only one obvious place and looping the strap through there prevents me from plugging in the DC power adapter in the car correctly. 128 MB MMC card - bigger than I thought I'd get honestly. I'm still figuring out how the software puts data on the card - in addition to your maps it is writting out other files as well - one of which is huge - I was only able to put about a 60mb map on the disk but I need to look into this more. LEI card reader seems to work but all of the software utilities are not working for me. I forget the name of the utility now but when I run it it tells me the driver is not loaded. But I had no problem creating map and waypoint file - putting them on the card and using them in the unit. Manuals seem ok so far - one for the unit one for the MapCreate software. Mapcreate softweare seemed relativly easy to use - I created a map file for the GPSr of Colorado without too many problems. The estimate size button always seems to estimate low so far. I also had the issue - I created a 83mb map (via the estiamte size tooll) but there wasn't enough room on the disk after the software put some additional files there. I'll have to look when I get home to tell you what those files were. Drive in this morning: The unit got me to work perfectly - it took a little longer to calculate the route than my friends iQUE but nothing too terrible. Screen was relativly easy to read - the only problem being the unit was vibrating around pretty good. The speak button is nice - it will make the unit give you information about the next turn if you missed whatit said or forgot. I don't like how it auto-zooms. It would be nice if when I changed the zoom level it would stay that way - at least until the next turn but it will revert to whatever zoom level if prefers after a few seconds. Anyway - these are just some quick impressions. Feel free to post questions about the unit and I'll try to answer them and I'll also post some more impressions later. Hopefully I'll tackle my first cache with this unit over the weekend and let you know how that goes!

The unit arrived last night! I didn't get much time to play but I'm starting a new thread to post some reviews.

WEll - I took the plunge and orderd the 100m over the weekend - will hopefilly arrive in a couple of days.

Well - I'm vry much looking at the Lowrance iWay 100m at this point - just wish there was a store anywhere in Colorado that sold it so I could check it out.

Quick question about the Lowrance unit - I scanned the manual real quick - I don't see a wya of putting it into an off-road mode or something similar to use for geocaching - As anybody used this unit for geocaching yet? Thanks for all the info all.

Thanks for all the good info - I was trying to get some pricing info on that Lowrance 100m - does anybpdy know of an online retailer that has it? I haven't been able to find it anywhere online yet. Thanks, Let me ask another question. I love using my friends iQue on driving trips - I just took a vacation and it was great just being able to search for nearby restauraunts shops and attractions. Do all these other handlheld units with the citymaps have that level of funtionality? Can i use them to easily find the nearest ATM or mexican restauruant and have them route me to it? Thanks.

Hello All, I'm looking to buy a GPS unit here soon - I'd like to find a single unit to do auto navication - with audio cues if possible for road trips and get into geocaching. I'm feelign a llittle lost looking at all the options that are out there. I've looked at the iQue - aside from having features I don't need - I don't need a PDA - it seems a little fragile for outdoor use but it has plenty of expandable memory to hold maps for road trips. What other models/makes are out there I should look at? I'd like something that could load a couple states worth of city map data - autoroute and be good for geocaching if possible. And I'd like to not spend more than 400$ at the most - $300 would be better. Thanks,

I'm not too familiar with all the products out there so I'm looking for some advice. I'd like to find a dual purpose unit that will allow to me do some geocaching as well as serve as a auto navigation unit. I don't need a ton of fancy features like voice audio prompts but something that beeps will be nice. Are there any units out there that will do this? Things like the iQue are a little out of my price range at the moment so I'm looking for something a little scaled back from that. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks