.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Best of the best in GPS apps
.AUTHOR James Booth
.SUMMARY In Senior Editor James Booth’s recent review of Proporta’s Freedom mini-GPS keychain, he introduced you to a variety of GPS applications, both free and retail. This follow-up piece showcases those applications individually, taking a closer look at each one. Which are worth your time, and which aren’t.
.OTHER
In my recent [[http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200711/00002080001.html|review of Proporta’s Freedom mini-GPS keychain]] I introduced you to a variety of GPS applications, both free and retail. This follow-up piece will showcase those applications individually, taking a closer look at each one. Which are worth your time, and which aren’t.
.H1 What’s for free?
Free is great isn’t it? Nothing is better than getting something for nothing. But do you really? Google, Microsoft, and Earthcomber all offer free GPS mapping applications, but are they worth the trouble? Or do you get what you pay for?
.H2 Google Maps Mobile
Google’s popular online Maps application has gone mobile. Having been ported to Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Blackberry Enterprise Server, you can now take Google Maps with you on the road. Unlike its desktop cousin though, Google Maps Mobile can make use of a GPS device.
With the mobile version of Google Maps you can search for an address, a specific business, or a type of business like in Figure A; even search directly from your Contacts, and get directions to them.
.FIGPAIR A Search directly from Google Maps.
.BREAK_EMAIL You’ll have to navigate your mouse-click here to learn more.
Included in the search results are not only the name, but complete contact information. If being used on a phone-enabled device, you can place a call to the location from the search results.
The display can be set as either a map or satellite image; and if available in your area, Google Maps Mobile can also show traffic information. If your device has a GPS connection, Google Maps Mobile can track your location and display it on the map.
The maps themselves, and the routing, were fairly accurate. There were a couple of routes I would have done differently, but unlike [[http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200709/00001979001.html|the previously covered Delphi and Garmin devices]], Google Maps Mobile shows you in Figure B that it will not take you out of the way.
.FIGPAIR B Google Maps provides fairly accurate, straightforward routes.
The locations of the POIs (points of interest) like in Figure C, were pretty accurate. I noted a few discrepancies, but nothing major. Certainly nothing to get in a tizzy over.
.FIGPAIR C Points of Interest in Google Maps is accurate, for the most part.
The single biggest fault of Google Maps Mobile is its requirement of a continuous data connection. Maintaining a constantly open wireless Internet connection on your mobile device can get quite expensive.
I used 2MB of data just for the Google Maps segment of this article, so in reality it isn’t actually "free."
Overall, Google Maps Mobile earns 3 out of 5. It’s a decent, fairly accurate GPS map application. But its data requirement can end up being expensive.
.RATING 3
.H2 Microsoft Live Search for Windows Mobile
Like Google’s Mobile Maps, Live Search for Windows Mobile is a Pocket PC port of the desktop version. Unlike Google Maps though, it is only available for Windows Mobile.
As you can see in Figure D, although its interface varies slightly from that of Google’s application, Live Search offers essentially the same services.
.FIGPAIR D Live Search offers a range of services
In addition to your choice of a map or satellite display, it will show traffic (if available in your area), give you routing directions like those shown in Figure E, as well as a variety of search categories from local activities and government, to restaurants and shopping.
.FIGPAIR E Dead-on routing in Live Search for Windows Mobile.
Figure F below shows some of the search categories Live Search for Windows Mobile offers.
.FIGPAIR F Live Search’s search categories.
It even has the dedicated Movies locator shown in Figure G.
.FIGPAIR G Live Search for Windows Mobile’s Movie finder.
Live Search Mobile will interface with any available GPS device and provide you with turn-by-turn directions. The directions were quite accurate, without taking you of the way. Sometimes a local resident may know a "better" way to get to a particular location, but in most instances Live Search provided me with the route I would have taken on my own.
Live Search’s location results were very accurate. In fact, I didn’t know the convenience store a block away from my house carried Pizza Hut pizza until it turned up as a location hit in Live Search. I was quite impressed.
Although it’s only available for Windows Mobile devices, Live Search Mobile is an excellent piece of very accurate GPS mapping software. The application itself may be free, but its requirement for a data connection and its data usage could make it cost-prohibitive. I give it 3 out of 5.
.RATING 3
.H2 Earthcomber
The final free application we’ll be looking at is Earthcomber. Of the free applications, it has the widest range of availability, with offerings for iPhone, Web-enabled cell phones, Blackberry, touchscreen Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices, and recently, the PC as well.
I actually didn’t care for the PC-Web version, and found it to be quite limited in features as compared to the Windows Mobile version. Therefore, my coverage of that particular aspect will be limited to the screenshot in Figure H and this mention.
.FIGPAIR H Earthcomber’s feature-limited PC-Web version.
Earthcomber’s routing is just as accurate as the other two, but unlike Google and Live Search, as you can see in Figure I, it does not display the route path on the map.
.FIGPAIR I Earthcomber doesn’t offer on-the-map routing.
Because the directions are displayed in text form with no voice prompting, it makes Earthcomber virtually impossible to use for on-the-road navigating. And although its maps and POI data is stored on your device (or its storage card), Earthcomber does require a data connection to compute directions.
My initial impression of Earthcomber when preparing the Freedom mini-GPS review was rather favorable, but the more I use it, the more difficulties I experience. It doesn’t supply as many hits for a given search as the other two, especially as compared to Live Search.
For example, the aforementioned convenience store did not show up in a search for Pizza Hut. And the closest Pizza Hut location it did come up with has been closed for several months. To be fair though, Google and Live Search both returned that location as well. However, Earthcomber did not list the additional locations they came up with.
It also seemed to be a bit buggy the more I used it. Sometimes it would display the map the full width of a landscape screen, and sometimes not. It crashed quite a bit too, requiring me to reset my device. I’m not sure if its difficulties are related to the Windows Mobile version specifically, or if they’re inherent to every platform it covers. But on further evaluation, I don’t think I’ll be keeping it on my device.
Despite keeping the majority of its data on your device and only needing a data connection for a very few things, for its lackluster POIs and tendency to crash, I think I’d have to rate Earthcomber at 1 out of 5.
.RATING 1
As we can see, when it comes to free, you really do get what you pay for. Even though an application may not have a monetary price attached to it’s acquisition, you do pay; either by sacrificing features and function, or by data costs associated with its use.
.H1 What’s available retail?
There are a lot of different GPS mapping and navigation applications available on the retail market. Delorme, TomTom, and Pharos are probably some of the better known names in the field. Of the companies approached to contribute to this article, TomTom, Pharos, and CoPilot chose not to participate. So, as in the the section on free software, we’ll be looking at basically three applications under the retail heading.
.H2 Navigate 7 PPC – $150.00
Based in The Netherlands, Route 66 produces several mapping programs on a variety of platforms. Previously dealing primarily in the European market, Route 66 is now marketing their products in the US.
In Figure J you see Navigate 7 PPC, Route 66’s Pocket PC Windows Mobile solution.
.FIGPAIR J Navigate 7 PPC from Route 66.
It allows for door-to-door navigation with on-the-fly re-routing should you deviate from your path. It offers quick address look-up, and in the case of Phone Edition Pocket PCs provides direct-dialing to restaurants and hotels. Navigate 7 has a large-button interface for in-car use, and night colors for navigating at night. You can even set a speed warning to help prevent speeding tickets.
Navigate 7 is a one-time purchase; there are no subscription fees involved. Apparently some services charge subscription fees. And like Earthcomber, Navigate 7’s maps are loaded onto your device. Well, a storage card actually. My point is that it doesn’t require a data connection to keep your position up-to-date.
Whereas Earthcomber’s maps are organized by county, Navigate’s maps are done by region. You load entire sections at a time, such as Western Canada, Eastern US, Midwest, etc.
Of all the software applications covered in this article, at $150.00 Navigate 7 is the most expensive. And it’s only software; it did not come with its own GPS receiver. In addition to being the most expensive, it was also the most worthless.
It flat-out did not work.
Navigate 7 is supposed to be installed on a memory card by placing the card in a card reader and running the installation utility. Which I did.
The card is then inserted in the device and the on-card installation utility is run. Except the main installer did not put the secondary installer on the card, so there was no way to install Navigate 7 on my device.
For the average consumer this very likely would have been the end of the road. The FAQ section on the Route 66 site did not address this issue and in truth was quite useless. There’s always the option of contacting tech support directly, but no one should have to do that just to get the application installed.
Not one to give up all that easily, I manually copied the files I knew to be missing over to the card and continued. It did install and run this time, but some of the files must have either been missing or corrupted because the display was incomplete. Missing was all of the speed, time, and directional data shown in the blue area of Figure K, a screenshot provided for the media by Route 66.
.FIGPAIR K How Navigate 7 is supposed to look, but didn’t.
By some miracle of fate though, Navigate actually detected and recognized my GPS unit.
Had Navigate worked properly, I think I still would have had complaints. With the exception of the main screen, it wasn’t at all intuitive. In fact, I found it a bit confusing and quite frustrating.
I’m not one bit ashamed to say that Route 66’s Navigate 7 PPC is the most worthless GPS-related expenditure of $150.00 I have ever seen. Even Earthcomber was better. I’m just thankful it was provided to me as a review sample. Had I actually purchased it for its full retail price I would have been quite angry; once software is opened it can’t be returned.
Due to all of its faults, shortcomings, and errors I cannot recommend Navigate 7 for purchase. In fact, I will go so far as to advise readers to steer clear of it and rate it at 0 out of 5. I think this may be our very first Totally Unplugged rating ever in the magazine. Not something to be proud of. Fortunately, there are better solutions below.
.RATING 0
.H2 Delorme Street Atlas 2008 – $40.00
Delorme is one of the more well-known names in the GPS field. They produce not only software, but printed maps and GPS receivers as well. In this segment though, we’ll be focusing on their Street Atlas 2008 application.
The Street Atlas 2008 package actually contains software for multiple platforms. The core, of course, is the PC program shown in Figure L, which is also compatible with Intel-based Macs running Boot Camp or Parallels for Windows XP.
.FIGPAIR L Delorme Street Atlas 2008 for the PC.
In addition to the main application, Delorme has also included the Palm OS and Windows Mobile versions of the program. Figure M below shows the Windows Mobile version.
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.FIGPAIR M Delorme Street Atlas 2008 for Windows Mobile.
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With Street Atlas, you can plan routes and trips, including any stops, waypoints, or POIs you desire. You can route from address-to-address, or point-to-point. Search parameters can be by place name, address, street or intersection, and businesses can be located by name or category. Maps, routes, and POI info can be captured and exported to your Palm OS or Windows Mobile device, even exported for media players like the iPod and Zune.
Honestly, I could go on and on about all of Street Atlas’ features, but there’s really no reason to. So many of them either didn’t work, or didn’t work properly that there’s no way I could recommend it for purchase.
The first thing that struck me about Street Atlas was how complicated, and quite frankly intimidating, the interface seemed. After stumbling around a bit, I finally got the GPS device recognized and synched up. Once it located my position and loaded the POIs, I discovered they weren’t accurate.
Not every single POI was wrong, but a sufficient number were so as to make them unreliable. It’s not so much that the POIs it displayed were nonexistent, it just showed them in the wrong location. And when I brought it to Delorme’s attention and inquired as to why they were incorrect, I never received a response back.
Initially I was just going to call it a day at this point. I had immediately found a problem and got no reply from the company; and customer support is very important to me. But in the interest of the consumer I delved further.
I next tried the routing feature; and again it failed miserably. Street Atlas was unable to locate any of the addresses I put in. I thought perhaps the street address itself was giving it trouble, so I tried just the street names; again, it could not locate them despite the fact that they were clearly displayed on the map.
Ever the dogged pit bull, I chomped down even harder and went in for more. I attempted to select a region for export to my handheld, but I guess I chose too large of an area because Street Atlas crashed while exporting.
I chose a smaller area next, just a single state. But again, it crashed during export. In the end I selected just my metropolitan area, which finally exported properly; even at that, it was a 2MB file for an area of only about 400 square miles.
Street Atlas is supposed to send these exports to a location from which they can be transferred to your handheld the next time you synchronize; except it didn’t. It wouldn’t recognize my device, nor did it put the files in a location from which they could be synchronized.
I dug around in some file directories and found the map file, then loaded it onto the handheld myself. But even then it was a substandard experience. Routing could only be done by selecting points on the map, not by name and address. But since the core application couldn’t find any addresses anyway, I guess it’s a moot point.
And finally, the routes it chose weren’t all that good either. They were valid routes, using main thoroughfares, but subjected the driver to lower speeds and much more stop-and-go traffic. The other applications all came up with much better routes.
Delorme also offers a Plus version of Street Atlas 2008 that contains all phone book entries for the US and Canada. The Plus version is only $10.00 more than the Standard, but considering how poorly it performed I’d recommend holding on to your money. For all of its glitches and failings, I can’t recommend Delorme’s Street Atlas 2008 for purchase and rate it at 2 out of 5.
.RATING 2
.H2 Microsoft Streets & Trips – price varies
Microsoft actually offers several varieties of their Streets & Trips; the Standard for $40.00, one that comes with a USB GPS receiver for $100.00, and the Connected Services version for $150.00, as well as Pocket Streets, the Windows Mobile version for $25.00. The Connected Services package comes with the same GPS receiver as the GPS package, but also includes an MSN Direct receiver for traffic and gas price updates without the need for an Internet connection. Coverage isn’t available in all areas though, so check before you buy.
I highlighted the Standard version in my Freedom mini-GPS review. As you can see from Figure N, the software itself is the same in all PC versions, but in this article I’ll be addressing the GPS version.
.FIGPAIR N Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008.
I’ll get the GPS receiver out of the way first so I can dedicate more space to the software. It works. There.
Just kidding. It’s actually a sweet little package. About the size of a Wheat Thin cracker, the GPS receiver you see in Figure O connects and is powered by a USB adapter.
.FIGPAIR O The GPS receiver included with Streets & Trips 2008 GPS.
Like most USB devices these days it’s Plug-n-Play and self-installing. It comes with a USB extension cable and suction cup in the event you want to stretch it up and stick it on your windshield, but the dongle attachment worked perfectly well for me indoors and should do so in a vehicle as well.
Streets & Trips with GPS receiver is a fairly reasonable deal at only $100.00. Like virtually all of these map programs, it can keep your position centered, offers routing and directions, POIs, will link up with Live Search when an Internet connection is available, and export maps to Pocket Streets.
The maps and routes in Streets & Trips shown in Figure P below, were every bit as accurate as those in Live Search.
.FIGPAIR P Routing in Streets & Trips 2008.
Although its POIs were also as accurate as Live Search, Streets & Trips did not come up with all the extra Pizza Hut locations like its online cousin.
Maps can be user-annotated with the Drawing Tools and uploaded to the Live Search community. Routing options can be set by quickest, shortest, type of road to travel, speed to travel at, even re-routing to account for construction. And its interface and usage are very intuitive. Maps can be displayed as Road, Terrain, Political, or Night view like shown in Figure Q.
.FIGPAIR Q Many GPS suites offer a Night view for navigating at night.
Overall, Microsoft’s Streets& Trips, both the Standard and GPS versions, were easy to use, accurate, and reliable. I really only have two complaints.
First, it couldn’t export a large area for use with Pocket Streets, crippling it somewhat for navigating long trips. And by large area, I mean an entire state. So what if it would have been a large file? Most Pocket PCs now are loaded with ample onboard memory and storage slots capable of supporting multiple gigabytes of space. Also, routes created on the PC are not exported to the handheld.
Second, I wish Pocket Streets were still included with Streets & Trips. It would make the package a bit more competitive with other suites, such as Delorme’s Street Atlas. But its accuracy, ease of use, and stability already make it hands-down better than Street Atlas.
Microsoft does still offer Pocket Streets as an individual purchase from their site, and it is also included as part of their MapPoint suite.
Streets & Trips, both the Standard version and the GPS version, easily rate 4 out of 5
.RATING 4
.H2 Pocket Streets 2005 – $25
Really a sub-category of Microsoft Streets & Trips, you can tell from Figure R that Pocket Streets is essentially the Windows Mobile version.
.FIGPAIR R Microsoft Pocket Streets, the Windows Mobile version of Streets & Trips.
It offers the same Road display and POIs as the PC version, and connects to any available GPS device, just like the PC version.
I’m not certain why, but for some reason it would not maintain the view options I set for the map; such as using a light background and displaying the roads when zoomed out. I would have preferred the map be panned by tapping and dragging, but it’s not set up that way. Tapping and dragging creates a selection box that then zooms in. On-screen arrows are provided for panning the map. The other shortcoming I found was with its routing options. It doesn’t have any.
Pocket Streets will find an address or a location and display it on the map, but it will not compute a route to that location; and isn’t that really the whole point?
Otherwise, I was relatively pleased with how Pocket Streets looked and performed. If I had my druthers, I’d rate it at 2.5 because it won’t plot a route. But since we only deal in whole numbers here at ZATZ, and it doesn’t rate the full three, I’m going to have to go with 2 out of 5.
.RATING 2
So when it comes to the retail products, I guess "you get what you pay for" doesn’t always apply. If that were the case, Navigator 7 PPC would have been top of the heap. But at $150.00 it’s only top of the price heap. And not that glitters is gold either. With all of the included alternative versions, you would have thought Delorme’s Street Atlas 2008 a value. But it’s only a value if it actually works. Clearly, despite their history as being an OS and collaboration suite developer, Microsoft knows GPS as well.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
Learn more about [[http://www.google.com/gmm/gps.html|Google Maps Mobile]].
Learn more about [[http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/software/livesearch.mspx|Live Search for Windows Mobile]].
Learn more about [[http://www.earthcomber.com/splash/index.html|Earthcomber]].
Learn more about [[http://www.66.com/route66/products.php?cid=US&sec=5&ssec=0&prodid=2185|Navigate 7 PPC]].
Learn more about [[http://shop.delorme.com/OA_HTML/DELibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=10121|Delorme Street Atlas 2008]].
Learn more about [[http://www.microsoft.com/streets/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=002|Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008]].
Learn more about [[http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.aspx?view=22&pcid=78efd7a7-53d3-4815-a8b9-315ff5bf1109&type=ovr|Microsoft Pocket Streets 2005]].
Learn more about [[http://www.proporta.com/F02/PPF02P05.php?t_id=3687&t_mode=des|the Freedom mini-GPS keychain]].
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