eBay, Sysonchip CF Plus II, SD cards etc.

[Rover3900]

I'm not sure this is quite the right place to post this as it covers several issues. but short of multiple postings this will have to do (Unless you decide to move it, in which case )

There have been quite a number of posts giving bad reports about eBay and other sellers, so I thought I'd add my own experiences.

I bought an almost brand new (4 weeks old) IPAQ 2210 on eBay for £160.00 from a private seller and it was exactly as advertised, the complete package down to the retail box inside the original brown outer HP shipping box. The IPAQ works perfectly.

I also bought a SanDisk Ultra II 66X (10Mb/sec) 256Mb card on eBay, from a seller in the USA called eglobal26. The card cost £12, although the postage and insurance were a bit steep, another £11, but I knew that before I bought it, so no complaints. The card arrived in 3 days. It too works perfectly, no hiccoughs, cock-ups or lock-ups.

Finally I bought a Sysonchip CF Plus II on eBay from a German seller called muulder123. That arrived in 2 days. Unfortunately I couldn't get the unit to work, so I emailed the seller. I had an immediate reply the same evening, with a couple of suggestions and a CAB file to try in the IPAQ. This didn't help so the seller suggested I return the unit. This I did, he emailed me to tell me he had received it 2 days later, then the following day emailed me again to tell me he had found the unit to be faulty and had sent me a new one. This also arrived in 48 hours.

The new unit worked immediately and had a good fix on 7 satellites within a minute inside my office. And no, it's not a glass palace, it's actually a typical late Victorian building! In use there's absolutely no lag and no hesitation so far as I can see at any speed, including fast acceleration or braking. If the map shows a side-road or filling station, look out the window and there it is, when it says its final 'turn left' I have about 10 yards to go. (Maybe the speed of the SD card has a lot more to do with performance or otherwise than it has been given credit for. After all, compared to the rest of the data in the system there's a huge amount of map data to sort through and shovel around.)

I'm not suggesting everyone goes mad buying on eBay, but not everyone selling on there is a rogue or a s**t head. My experience with the Sysonchip was unlucky, but it was just a faulty new unit, not a faulty seller. In the event the problem was handled excellently and extremely rapidly, much better and quicker than a good many reports about UK vendors I've read in these forums.

I also bought an amplified car screen mount from Pdamods (which provides power to the IPAQ in use). This arrived in 2 days and it works fine too. I've no complaints there, although I know others have had.

The result is I have an IPAQ 2210, a 256Meg extremely fast SD card, an excellent CF GPS receiver plus an amplified car mount and (excluding Tom Tom 3) I've spent less than £300.00 altogether, so I'm extremely happy.

The reasons for the posting, as I said at the beginning, are several.

For those completely new to all this, as I was a month ago, the above combo makes an extremely neat in-car solution, while remaining fully portable for use elsewhere. It sits in the car as a single unit and there's only one wire, the power cable to the cigarette lighter socket, which I might plumb in eventually.

I made 3 of my purchases on Ebay and I have no complaints whatsoever. In fact I have nothing but praise for the seller of my Sysonchip and overall I've saved a small fortune, I reckon at least £100.00.

For those who might have been put off by some of the comments about eBay, the decision remains yours. I reckon if you look at the track record of your prospective vendors and carefully read between the lines in their ads you can soon spot likely con artists and rip-off merchants. Remember, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. My eBay motto is the louder they shout in their ads the less I listen.

To those who are completely green about what you need and how it fits together works, as I was a month ago, I'd just say most of all don't be impatient. Spend a bit of time reading the forums and the reviews here and keep doing it until you understand how the kit fits together, what it does and how works, then you'll know what you need or want. Then, when you've decided, don't buy the first one you see - of anything, whether it's eBay or elsewhere. There'll be another one along very soon (especially on eBay) and dealers will re-stock.

Do your homework proper;y and you can save quite a bit of cash and probably some frustration too, not to mention some head scratching.

Sorry for the length of this post, but I thought I'd share my experiences in the hope that it might bring some balance to the unfortunate stories of some others that I've read here and anyway, this is only my second post, so after a fair bit of lurking I think I should try to make up for it. I hope it helps someone.

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