A holiday trip driving to several places the first time without preparation won’t get me far because I could soon be lost behind the wheel. The sky-high gas price will not only get on my nerves, but my wife could also make me feel like I am the one ruining the holiday. In the past, I had to look up the places on the Web like Google map and wrote down the directions on a scratch paper. It always worked if I was driving with someone, but it could be hard when traveling alone; especially the unlucky happens like the paper falls on the floor mat in the middle of highway.
A GPS will make all the preparation and driving easy. However, if you are in the market searching one for the upcoming holiday trip, you could end up spending lots of time and still cannot decide. The reason is that almost every brand comes with its unique features that you like, unfortunately they all leave too much to be desired.
I have been comparing middle to high-end models like Magellan Maestro 4250, Garmin nüvi 680, and Mio DigiWalker C520. I found most of the professional reviews are useless; they all read like sales pitch. The best place for review, in my opinion, would be Amazon.com, full of details and hand-on experience. Not until I get myself one, did I realize how bad the product can be. I bought a Magellan Maestro 4250 and as soon as I used it I already found out there are many should be improved. Here are a few.
1. This device crashes and freezes a lot, and the power button seems to have its own mind.
2. Text-to-speech for the menu items is nice but it slows down everything. The worst is that the buffer memorizing the key press could let you accidently select the wrong item. When mute is on, you will realize how responsive it is.
3. Trip planner is working fine, but you are not allowed to edit each record you created except deleting it. For each place on the trip planner, you are allowed to add phone numbers, which is nice since the device has Bluetooth hand-free capability, but there is no way to retrieve those phone numbers, not even from the address book, or previous destinations. What is the point by putting all the info if you cannot retrieve them?
Above are the problems I spotted right after several minutes of using it, I wonder if the programmers actually did their jobs. Has the product ever been beta-tested? Since most GPS devices are Windows CE based, features are just matters of programming. {Immediate release…because I will be on the road in 5 min}
The following is the unforgiving one that I found out during the trip.
4. Faulty routing algorithm. A picture is better than a thousand words. See for yourself.
2 comments:
I found your blog on a search for info on this GPS device. I just got it today, and have the same disappointments that you mentioned. Not being able to save numbers nor dial them from the address book seem like obvious programming flaws. And so I'm off to peruse the internet for firmware updates or makeshift solutions to some of the most pressing issues.
In any event, thanks for your 2 cents. How have you made out since this post (July) in the GPS department?
UPDATE... I don't know if it was there all along... but I updated the firmware just minutes ago (from 2.2 to 4.6) and I can now dial from the address book. Awesome... There were a number of other changes with the firmware, but this was the only particularly worthwhile one for me. HTH.
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