Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 2

This morning I was thinking about returning my GPS Companion but 2 things have happened since then to make me totally change my mind. Firstly, I found this forum and got some handy tips which seem to have solved the position fix problems (thanks John Creighton) and secondly, I bought and installed Route USA by Palmtop Software (http://www.palmtop.nl/palm/routeusa.html). I found that it works perfectly with Magellan's GPS Companion.

Since I only downloaded the software this morning I've obviously only marginally tested it, but it so impressed me that I just had to post a message here. In my opinion it's well worth the $50US.

Be aware, this is not a door-to-door route planner (it has no concept of street addresses), but more of a town-to-town planner. The maps lack the detail of those used by Quo Vadis (ie Marcosoft) but are still *incredibly* detailed for their size (check the sizes at the above URL, eg California 551K!!!).

If you do a trip of anything over 20 miles, I reckon this is what your Visor will be displaying 95% of the time. The other 5% being when you switch to Map Companion to find your way to a small street in your destination town.

The interface is way cool: zooming is particularly funky and panning redraw is fast. The software tracks you as you (hopefully) follow the planned route and shows distance to and road name of the next turn at the bottom of the screen. It also automatically pans as you go off-screen. The route calculation function seems to work great (and quite fast too), but only more testing will tell if that's true or not.

Some comments:
Road names are not shown. You have to tap the road to find the name (and a lot of them are "unnamed"). However, I haven't found this to be a problem with normal use: if I'm following a planned route I don't care what the names of all the roads are, as long as my 'dot' is travelling along the highlighted one!

Some unfriendly road names: for example, "Henry Bloggs' Avenue" will be reported as the S435 or some such number (if it has one) that you may not recognize.

The directions won't tell you whether you must go N,S,E or W. For example, a turn onto Route-1 South will be marked as just plain "US1". Of course, it's usually not difficult to see for yourself which direction to take.

Route planning across State borders doesn't work. You'll have to plan in legs, by finding a town near the border that's on the way. You can to do that with Map Companion.

All-in-all I think that the combination of the GPS Companion, Route USA and Map Companion is a powerful one, which will tell you how to get where you're going, and get you there without the kind of stress induced by paper maps!

Registered: Apr 2001
Location:
Posts: 2

Route planning for magellan

What do you think of the route planning software now, after having used it for a few weeks?

As a tool, I think the GPS comp. is marginally useful. It's painful to load all those maps, but when you are working with a budget constraint you compromise. It doesn't seem like a route planner is an overwhelming demand, although I'm not writing the software for MarcoSoft. In my view your computer does the complex routing calculation and then you download the appropriate maps and route.

Would you still recommend Route USA? Also, did you research any other brands? I am surprised that yours is the most detailed posting about this topic. I would think that more people are realizing that route planning would be a very valuable addition to GPS Comp.

Registered: Mar 2001
Location:
Posts: 2

> What do you think of the route planning software now,
> after having used it for a few weeks?

I'm just as impressed with it, although I still haven't had the opportunity to do a longer trip (>50 miles).

> Also, did you research any other brands?

Nope. To be honest, I couldn't find anything else at the time and I haven't looked for anything else since. There may be better stuff out there but I soon get fed up with researching and go with what seems to work.

> As a tool, I think the GPS comp. is marginally useful.

I'm not sure whether you mean Magellan's effort or PDA GPS modules in general, but I suppose it depends on your application. I'm getting acceptable results which help me find my way around without stopping every 10 mins to wrestle with a folding map - and that's all I want.

> It's painful to load all those maps, but when you are
> working with a budget constraint you compromise.

Right. One solution I'm working on is having all relevant maps (state/tri-state/whatever) loaded on CompactFlash so I can just slot in the right one when I'm in the neighborhood.

> It doesn't seem like a route planner is an overwhelming
> demand, although I'm not writing the software for
> MarcoSoft. In my view your computer does the complex
> routing calculation and then you download the appropriate
> maps and route.

Maybe it's just me but I'm often nowhere near a computer when I find out that I have to go somewhere! Also, you just can't beat a "smart" route description that "knows" where you are, and displays it graphically!

> I would think that more people are realizing that route
> planning would be a very valuable addition to GPS Comp.

Me too! Maybe people have gotten used to <insert online mapping site here> and need some time to realise "hey, I can leave the PC out of this equation".

Registered: Apr 2001
Location:
Posts: 2

Thanks for the comprehensive reply!

I'm going to buy Route USA and post here after using it a bit...

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Alive and well on VisorCentral.com
Posts: 861

Route planning with POI's will be available for GEODE users as part of geoview web. I'm pretty sure it will be free as well.. Not on line right now but it should be soon.

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