Newbie questions!

[Manolo-X]

Hello gents:
I'm thinking of buying a PDA/GPS-mouse antenna combo for my car.

1)Which would you recommend for the Washington DC area?

2) Which entry level (read cheapest) PocketPC model would I be able to use to run a GPS software ( I probably won't get into Bluetooth right now so assume a wire).

3) Which map software would be good? Do I have to upload maps into the PDA in chunks depending on which area I am transiting?

4) Could a GPS antenna be confused with a radar detector? Those are illegal in the state of Virginia and I'd rather not get in trouble over it. Could I place the mouse below the dash somewhere and still get reception to the GPS satellites?

Thanks for your help and attention!

Hector

[Dave]

Hi Hector,

1) There's a number of packages available that will give you street level maps of the entire USA. If you're sticking to a cabled mouse GPS then you would have to exclude Navman for this. Good selections are TomTom Navigator 2, CoPilot Live and Destinator 3.

2) Cost is an issue, if you go to cheap you may regret it. The iPAQ 2210 is fairly cheap but very compatible with all types of accessories and has a good track level with dual storage. You should be able to pick one of these up quite cheaply and not effect the quality.

3) You will have to upload map segments. You might want to look at CoPilot Live, or Destinator 3, here you can create which map segments to load to your storage cards. The beauty of CoPilot Live, is if you wanted to create a route from East to West coast then you can create a map corridor, and set a radius around your journey and it will just load those maps cutting down on storage requirements. Another product is Mapopolis which I wouldn't rule out as a lot of Americans like this as a cheap solution which works well in the US.

4) I very much doubt it. GPS is used not just for navigation but for tracking, if the Police confused it, then they would be very inexperienced and you can easily show it's not a radar detector by showing them a manual or by showing product literature. Placing the mouse below the dash will give sub standard results, but most of them (esp the RoyalTek Sapphire) are small enough to hardly see on the dashboard when it's in the corner of the windscreen. If you are really concerned about this, then you may want to go Bluetooth, and go for an Emtac/Transplant Bluetooth GPS, you could hide this down near the gear stick, or even in your shirt pocket and get a reasonable signal but it won't be as good as being on the dashboard.

Take a look at the following Review sections:-
GPS Mouse Receivers
Bluetooth GPS REceivers
Street Routing Software

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