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Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:32 pm Post subject: Mio168/CoPilot5 - First Impressions
I have had the unit for a week now, and I have to admit that on the whole, I'm disappointed.
It was a straight decision between CPL5 & TomTom3, and after reading the reviews on this site, I decided on CoPilot. (At the time, I had not read this forum).
First time out, I found the TTS voice very difficult to understand. I used it on familiar roads, and asked myself the question that if I didn't know the area, would I be able to find my way ? And, I have to say, that I wouldn't.
For urban driving, I have the prompts set for 1 mile, 3/10 mile and 100 ft. Even so, it would give a command for a roundabout 1 mile ahead, but not for an intervening one. On arrival at the roundabout for which it gave the 1 mile warning, it would only announce an instruction at 100 ft.
On motorways, the commands for exits are almost non-existant. On joining the M6, it announced 'Just ahead take exit', when just ahead was actually 25 miles away. On reaching that junction, there would be no instruction.
On other occasions, it only announces the exit when it's too late. For example; again with the settings at 1 mile, 3/10 mile and 100 ft, I was driving south on M53 and needed to exit at junction 2. It gave no announcement until I was level with the dividing chevrons when the sliproad has already left. For the whole distance that I was travelling alongside the exit lane/sliproad (which at this junction is over half a mile) there was no instruction.
Notwithstanding the non-announcements of POI's, how can a company market a product that is clearly substandard and not up to the job for which it is intended ??
I borrowed a friend's TomTomGo for an evening, and used this on the same familiar roads. What can I say, other than I was totally impressed with it. The voice commands were clear for every junction/turn, and it was a pleasure to use.
It makes CPL5 look amateurish by comparison - particulalrly the voice commands.
Now, I really feel that I have wasted my money with CPL5. I don't know how I stand legally to get a refund, as I consider that I have bought a product that is not up to the job.
I agree fully with your findings and am considering taking ALK to the small claims court to get my money back (Product does not work as advertised) I have found if you use the WAV files it works much better than the Text to Speach
What version of CoPilot 5 is it you have; I have latest = 5.0.1.30 and it's crap!
I originaly had CoPilot 3 on an Ipaq and it was better!!
Yes, I've got v.30 as well. My old Commodore Amiga (if you remember these computers from over 20 years ago), gave much better Text to Speech than the CPL5.
Quite simply, the whole 'announcemnt' / 'speech' problems lets the whole package down badly. It even gives sentances in the wrong word order; eg 'junction in 100 yards less than'. This is just rank-bad amateur programming !!
If it were not for this, I'm sure that it would be a worthwhile unit.
I can't see how ALK, knowing what else is out there (particularly TT3), can consider that they have a quality product. As I said before, because the actual instructions/speech is really one of the most important functions of in-car GPS, it makes the whole product ill-conceived and amateurish.
The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am for not going with my first choice of TT3.
I had you exact same problems and feelings and would strongly suggest you contact ALK's tech line and request a replacement set of CDs. If you checkout my previous entry you may see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I been running my latest install which is funtioning perfectly now after nearly two months of frustration, anger, disappointment and fatique. Hopefully you may be able to avoid this - ALK permitting!!
I tried to send the following to you, however it appears to be stuck in my outbox!
Hope this helps:
Hi Bazzer,
Ok here goes!
On your storage card there should be a My Documents Folder which contains the gps tracks, each with a file name relating to its date of creation.
Now I thumbled with this for a bit but found the following:
In planning mode create a route which you have previously driven and preferably one with plenty of POIs that have failed. Now go to the GPSmenu and select open track. Select the track which applies to your programmed route. Open the GPS menu again and select play track. Tap the OK button in the top right display. You should now see CoPilot going through your route as if you were driving it. What is really useful, is that you can change Map/Guidance/POI settings and this will all be reflected in your playback. So if you think for example that varying the enroute-near route setting may help you can try it out.
I hope the above works, as I'm doing from memory and it's been a long day!
Any problems, let me know and I'll run through it with Copilot while I'm writing it up.
Further to my previous rant above, I'm in the process of planning a route, and amongst other things, it wants me to drop 20ft off a flyover onto the road below, and go round a roundabout the wrong way.
As Bazzer stated, I'm also very disappointed in Copilot 5
After reading the reviews on this site, I purchased the Mio 168/Copilot
combo unit.
Installed all items as per instructions, only to find out that the text to speech didn't work. After reading other horror stories, I uninstalled/installed a few times finally got it to Work.
The installing issues are no big deal to me, anonying but no big deal as long as I can get it to work.
However I'm still trying to figure out what the hell the text to speech is saying. I agree this is absoultly horrible. I constantly have to look
down at the screen to see what is going on. I drove about 30 miles and could not understand anything. I'm sure some of it has to do with the GPS speaker but geez whiz
I'm going to try the wav files but I really wanted the voice street names and such....
as also stated It tells me to turn left/right only after or while I am turning
Is there an external speaker which I can Hook up to amplify the Sound or Something(amplicy sound is selected on the Mio and sound all the way up)
If I can't get the Sound be any better, I need another solution
I had a hard enough time convincing the wife we needed a GPS
Now she Says "Yes, we really needed that Piece of crap"
Things have moved on apace since my last posts. I complained through the site I bought the unit from (Global Positioning Systems.co.uk), and 3 separate people got involved with replies to me.
One reply was just the standard 'We don't replace/exchange software and you have to contact the manufacturer'.
Another reply was more sympathetic and they said that they would do all that they could to ensure that I had a working system. I think that they actually contacted ALK Technologies and explained the problem to them, as last Wednesday (2nd March) ALK phoned me directly.
The bottom line is that I returned my software (the 2 cd's) and my SD card with the installed programme to ALK. They phoned me again on Friday (4th March) to confirm that they had received it OK, and that they would test it over the weekend. They also mentioned that they were surprised I was having these problems. But they seemed keen to help.
Since my previous posts, I have become more frustrated with the unit, as on a route to work, it completely fails to announce 2 roundabouts and a right turn !
And on a test drive around my area it also failed to announce other roundabouts, and only announced 1 POI out of about 20 !!
I detailed all of these points to ALK with accompanying maps.
So at the moment, having spent £369 I've got nothing to show for it. I'm just hoping that when ALK return it to me, it works OK. My breath is certainly wll bated !!
Well After reviewing All the audio Sounds(tts and Wav files) and driving in circles around my area for 3 hours. Hopefully no one though I was stalking them..
The Best I'd say is the Male Wav files. I can play these with the radio on low and get the gist of what he's saying. The "Just Ahead" every 2 minutes is Quite annoying. Thankfully they are wav files and I can edit them.
Since I live in a metropolitan area and there are POI's every 10 seconds
I didn't enable this feature (I guess I could filter them)
However I'll see if I have the same issue as you.
Yes Also it didn't let me know of a right turn until 5 seconds after I already made it. I did change the "just Ahead" in options to 8/sec
I'll see if that makes a difference tomorrow.
If there is demo version of another software maybe I will try it
Since this is the only unit and software I've had I can't compare it to anything. Guess I'll do some more reading here in the forums
Joined: Nov 24, 2003 Posts: 1441 Location: Swansea
Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 10:10 pm Post subject:
I hope you do better with build 48.
I had endless problems with CP4. In spite of very helpful attempts to help by ALK UK, I was never able to get the wav voice to work, and the TTS voice struggled with Welsh road names and was so slow that in dense town centres the relevant turning had usually been passed before he got to the actual instruction. Also, the map display often became blue in colour, rendering the maps almost invisible.
ALK invited me to join their beta test program before CP5 was put on sale, and eventually gave me a replacement CP5.
From the outset, CP5 was much better. The blue wash had vanished, and the TTS voice was briefer and more usable, though I greatly prefer the female wav voice (which works ok on this version)
Like you, I find that some junctions (usually when roundabouts have slip roads) do not have a voice warning, but the correct instructions are invariably on the screen.
I'm not greatly impressed by the 3D view, and usually use the safety screen, which reverts to a map when you are about 0.6 miles before a junction.
I opt for 8sec/100 ft for the "just ahead" warning, which usually gives the final warning before it is too late, but I have (nearly) always received an earlier warning at 1 mile and 3/10 mile, plus advance warning on the screen. (Even TomTom often gives the final warning just a little too late - I suspect that the mapping companies show the actual junction a little bit after the point at which the lanes start to divide) That's why I value the easy to read safety screen which gives a count down to the juncton and is very quick to read at a glance.
ALK have improved the volume of the voice commands, though I use a Holux amplified mount/GPS receiver, which gives greatly improved volume.
CoPilot calculates routes very quickly, but is not as good as TomTom if you are on a different road from the calculated route. If you have to take a detour on a parallel city centre road which is only 30 or 40 yards from the "correct" road, it does not recognise that you are on a different road and continues to give instructions appropriate to the original route. TomTom recalculates a new route much sooner.
My own experience is that CP5 is still a bit rough around the edges, but the map quality/accuracy is a little better than TomTom. However, their upgrade charges are much higher than TomTom, so although I shall definitely upgrade to TomTom 5 when it comes out, I doubt if I shall be prepared to fork out over £100 to convert to CP6 whenever that is announced. But perhaps they will have changed their upgrade pricing next time round!
Robin
Well, I've had my CPL5 back for a week now. ALK had my CD's and SD Card for about 2.5 weeks and during that time, they were very helpful keeping me fully updated with their progress. They returned the unit with v.48 of the software (European version).
I have to say that the unit is working much better, although still not perfect. The roundabouts and junctions that it had previously missed are now announced correctly.
The Text to Speech voice is more understandable, although does appear to give some irrelevant information. It even seems to have got it's tongue around the correct pronounciation of 'miles'. Although, when announcing POI's, it seems to prefer 'meeles'.
I find the 'Bear Left / Bear Right' announcements mis-leading, as these would suggest a deviation from the current road that you are on. However, it likes announcing BL/BR even when the road just bends one way or the other, with no actual turn.
In one instance, it would have sent me completely the wrong way if I had not known which way to go. There is a complicated junction called 'Switch Island' in Liverpool where the M57,M58 & A57 meet. On approaching this, it simply announced 'at roundabout bear left'. Yes the road does bend left just before the roundabout, but I needed to turn right, and there was no command to do this. Also, going in the opposite direction, the instruction was very vague.
All in all, an improvement, but far from a polished product. I'm looking forward to seeing TT5.
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