Off road - any good at all?

[Trude]

Hi folks



I have my hardware (Jornada 565, socket BT CF card and GPS), now I'm looking around for suitable software. Tomtom looks good for driving around the country, but I also do a lot of cyling (bridleways, footpaths, etc).



My question is, is Tomtom Nav2 any use at all for walking or cyling? I gather from what I've read so far that you can't program in a specific route (even when driving on roads) but will it be able to show sufficient detail on small roads, footpaths etc so that I can at least use it as a simple "you are here" type thing?



If the answer is no (and apologies for drifting somewhat off-topic here), does anyone know of a program that can give Tomtom style directions for navigating to specific addresses, but also allow for planning specific routes, down to the level of detail I might need for cyling?



I'm beginning to think I might need two serarate programs (maybe Memory Map or similar) but this would be a big strain on both my wallet and my PDA's memory resources!!



Any advice would be most gratefully received!



Cheers

Trude

[Dave]

If you're looking at bridleways and footpaths you'll probably be better off with a Topographical map. Something like Memory-Map or Fugawi UK would be more suited for this. You own't get TomTOm style directions from these software, they are really just a moving map and allow you to track your position and where you have been.

[Trude]

Thanks Dave, that's pretty much what I thought.



So, if I want to drive to a specific location (using motorways etc, and getting directions along the way), and then get on my bike and start exploring, I'm going to need two separate programs? (Probably with map data installed on two separate memory cards!)



Darn.



Knowing my luck, somebody's about to release a program to fit both scenarios, and I'll only hear about it after shelling out £300 to buy Tomtom AND Memory-Map....

[Dave]

Most street routing programs will use around 100mb of storage space, so if you purchased a 256mb storage card, this would suffice.



However, you are using the CF slot with your BT card. Do you have one of those battery packs with an extra CF slot in ? If so, it shouldn't be a problem. You will need two different programs, no one program does the trick. Navman are bringing out a package, but it will only work with the iPAQ's.

[Trude]

I have an MMC battery on order from expansys. I've only been able to find MMC cards up to 128MB, so I think that's the limit I have to work with at the mo. They're not too expensive though, so I might just get a couple.



Thanks for the advice on the software! I've just ordered Fugawi, as is seems to have pretty good reviews (at about 1/3 the price of Memory-Map). Maybe I'll be able to survive using the road atlas maps for the time being, without any further street routing software. (It's gotta be easier than juggling paper maps in any case!)

[Dave]

Is it MMC or SD ? If MMC then I think 128mb is the limit, if it supports SD cards, then you should currently be able to go up to 512mb, soon to 1GB.

[Trude]

It's MMC. (see link)



http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=F2913A



Do you know of a Jornada SD battery then, Dave? If so, I might be able to cancel my order and go for one of those instead!!



Cheers

Trude

[nicknick]

Trude,



As an ex-owner of a HP568 can I suggest a quick look at these links Link 1 and Link 2 and Link 3 these will give you a glimpse of the potential problems ahead.



Basically the SD card problems seen by others have manifested themselves for Jornada owners with the MMC Battery



The formatting fix (see links) can help, but if you see the lockup problems then there is no fix apart from a new PPC (however it's not REALLY bad - 2-3 resets required in a 125 mile journey for me - and TTN picks up quickly the route you were on - and luckily the reset button is easily accessible on the 568)



I have two 128M MMC cards from those times (one from Expansys - the exact one in your link - and one from Pretec) the Pretec one (suitably formatted with 16k clusters) currently resides in my Dell Axim and works well. I expect the Expansys would be just as good.



In the links you will see the various things I tried to verify the problem - basically it's the MMC Battery.



The only other thing I didn't try was smaller MMC cards - but 64M would not have been useful for a full TTN map.



Sorry if this puts a bit of a downer on your plans, however it is a workable solution, you just have to work around the bugs



Oh, if you look at the carton the battery came in you will see that in the Japanese wording it says "SD", but not in the English translation - so this is a possibility but the 'official' word is that it is not a 'supported' option.



Best advice is to borrow a 128M SD card from a friend and see if it works - may be better than the MMC - but test it on a big journey (another test is to copy some big files from the PPC MMC/SD card to the PC using the 'Explore' feature on Activesync - good options here are the TTN files - if there is a problem accessing the card then you will get failures when copying)


_________________
Nick

[Dave]

No, I remember HP doing a battery with storage card slot, but I couldn't remember if it was MMC or SD compatible.



Apparently you can use some SD cards in the MMC slot according to Lagorio, so you might be able to go higher than 128mb but it is hit and miss, although HP do officially state it does not support SD.

[Trude]

Nick, you're really filling me full of confidence here!



The good news is that I haven't actually bought TT2 yet, so I don't have to get myself embroiled in all this necessarily. Is this definitely just an issue with TT2, or do you reckon I'll see it with other programs too?



I first approached my GPS buying strategy with the intention of making the best use of what hardware I already have (hence the enhancements to the HP565 with the MMC battery and BT CF card) rather than buying brand new kit. I don't know - I guess I was feeling a bit environmentalist/anti-consumer or something! I intend to use this Jornada until it's well and truly dead...



Anyway, hopefully I'll find a SW solution that will work with the hardware, though it's beginning to look like Tomtom won't be the one. I don't understand why there are no demo versions available for these programs - it could really help with these kind of decisions (particularly as eXpansys at least do not accept returned SW products that have been opened).



Does anyone know of any routing SW that can be downloaded in trial form? At least then I could satisfy myself that my heath-robinson system will cope with the task before forking out!



Thanks for the help guys - much appreciated!

Trude

[DavidW]

Trude,



Certain pieces of software are known for showing up flaky hardware.



On the PC, the Turnpike mail and news program is well known for doing this - it will often show flaky hard disk or memory subsystems up by producing various errors when other software is still working perfectly. The temptation is to blame Turnpike (I remember when a fellow user was convinced it was Turnpike's fault!), but it usually turns out that the hardware was to blame. The user who was so adamant found nearly a year later that either his RAM or hard disk was flaky - I can't remember which of the two it was.





I guess the same is true of navigation software on the Pocket PC - it will show up slow or flaky memory systems.



MMC is rather slower than SD memory. It would be fascinating if Nick, or someone else with a Jornada and MMC battery, could try either Pocket PC Mark or Spb Benchmark (the latter is free for personal use) on the MMC and see what kind of figures are returned. If necessary, I can supply comparitive figures for my iPAQ 3970 on both applications.





I appreciate Trude's concern about returning software; once opened it isn't returnable. My fear is that it's more something to do with the hardware than with a problem in TomTom Navigator 2 and that any software will fail on the Jornada / MMC battery combination.







David

[nicknick]

Trude,



On my system it was definitely a hardware issue (and that being the MMC battery - not the MMC card) not the software. It was just that 92M map file (well actually its really smaller - but still big - interlinked files) really showed it up.



You could show it was the card by copying large files to and from the MMC using Explore via activesync. For instance if I tried this with the whole of the Great Britain directory created with TTN then one or more would timeout and fail - you would need to borrow an SD or MMC card to check this out before buying.



Once I realised this was the issue - and it could be repeated (note the formatting trick improved this too), then my next step was (eventually - when I had enough pennies) the Dell Axim.



If you buy TTN2 it will work (at the worst with the limtations I have detailed - some others have seen the same issue so I know mine was not an isolated hardware issue - it could have been the size of the card too - as I had the same problem with different cards), and could be used (after the timeout) on a different machine.



The speed of the MMC makes no difference, as I am using this without problems on the Dell.



Sorry for the 'downer' but it's best to know before buying. It may be that you would have no hardware problems, but others have reported the same issue (you can also have a look at Alix's post for a slightly different view - I've never used GPSAssist though and had the same problem with different GPS drivers)



Regards


_________________
Nick

[Trude]

Bringing this one out of the archives......



nicknick, you mentioned that the soft reset button is easily accessible on the J568. Are you talking about the power button in the bottom-left corner of the device, or do you mean the recessed reset button on the back?



The reason I ask is that I wouldn't say the reset button is at all accessible whilst driving - however, if you're talking about the front button, therefore implying that it can un-freeze TT2, then I could probably live with that. (However, this seems a bit unlikely since switching the unit off never seems to affect the running programs at all)

[nicknick]

Trude,



Sorry I did mean the reset button. You are right it's not easy to get to, but better than most PPCs. When in the cradle, most reset buttons are hidden by the cradle where as the Jornada reset button is at the top so can sit in the cradle and still be accessed (or at least I found this was so).



I suppose I got used to doing it - the stylus is easy to get to and the reset button is nicely recessed so you don't need to look at it to press it. But thinking about it it was probably not the safest thing to do.


_________________
Nick

[TonyP]

I know that with Fugawi you can just download a selected area of a map to the PDA, so you can trace out a hike or bike ride on the PC, and then download just that area, so it doesnt take much space. Maybe Memory map can do the same.



I myself think a PDA is hopeless for biking and hiking. The battery doesnt last long enough and it isnt robust enough. The screen is too small. It shows where you are but you dont see enough if you want to abort and find the nearest village.

I use a Garmin eTrex and download a track that I have traced out on the PC. I keep a4 printout of the map section in my pocket for emergencies.

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