Reviews
Street
Atlas 2005 Handheld
For serious, experienced GPS users, DeLorme's hardware/software
bundle is an incredible deal
DeLorme
has been in the mapping industry for almost 30 years, and when
digital mapping arrived in the 1980s, the company helped define
it and advance the state-of-the-art by putting street-level detail
for the entire US onto a single CD with its Street Atlas USA product.
A dozen versions later, Street Atlas USA is among the premier,
and most popular, mapping and navigation applications. While putting
heavy emphasis on professional markets with a variety of add-on/complementary
products such as Topo USA, 3-D TopoQuads and XMap, DeLorme continues
to provide amazingly affordable GPS solutions, available in a
variety of hardware/software bundles. The one we're reviewing
here is DeLorme ãBundle #3ä that includes Street Atlas 2005 USA,
Street Atlas 2005 USA Handheld for both Palm and Pocket PC, the
DeLorme Blue Logger GPS receiver, a charging station for both
for the GPS and the included Lithium-ION battery, a cigarette
lighter charger, a belt carrying case, and the DeLorme Blue Logger
Manager software to set up logging options for the receiver. All
of this combined costs just US$179.95÷much less than most of the
competition. In this review we aim to determine if it's all just
too good to be true: Big name, more software and lower price.
The
Street Atlas 2005 USA Handheld comes on two CDs. The installer
asks if you want Palm, Pocket PC, or both. It then asks if you
want to install all data on the hard drive, in which case it needs
the second CD. You then start the Street Atlas 2005 USA Handheld
application with its tutorial and very detailed help. Street Atlas
isn't quite as simple and intuitive as Microsoft's MapPoint because
it doesn't use the standard Windows interface, but if you spend
a bit of time familiarizing yourself with its conventions and
ways of doing things you'll discover a very powerful application.
As far as creating maps for the Palm or Pocket PC goes, you simply
select an area either by name, address or drawing a rectangle,
then edit the area until it includes everything you want. Once
that is done you name and export the map data for downloading
into the handheld. Brilliant.
The
application will automatically install the first time you connect
the Pocket PC to your computer via ActiveSync. Even though I had
the 2005 version of the software, the iPAQ 4700 displayed a warning
message about the app being designed for a previous version of
Windows Mobile. Despite the warning the software worked fine although
text on maps often became fuzzy and maps had to be redrawn to
get the sharp text back.
Like
the desktop version, the Pocket PC version of Street Atlas requires
some getting used to. Whereas most of the competition aims for
simplicity in their PDA-based mapping systems, DeLorme chose a
more technical, tool-like implementation. You won't find large
explanatory icons and easy-to-use screen controls here. You also
won't find 3D map views or lots of colorful graphs. Instead, Street
Atlas looks and feels like a hardcore navigation application for
those who know what they are doing. Screens showing speed, direction,
elevation, satellite position or sun/moon data are all black-and-white
and heavily data-centric, with a minimum of graphics. In almost
every detail, Street Atlas employs traditional GPS navigational
terminology. This package is about routes, waypoints, lots of
data, and GPS logs.
You
can find Points of Interest in 20 different categories and determine
in what location they should be, within what radius, how many
matches, and how they should be sorted. You can then add those
to your waypoints database. Points of Interest often contain information
such as telephone number, exact location, specialties, and the
exact coordinates. However, entries show up with such names as
ãSAHH Entry3 (Work)ä instead of something a bit friendlier.
In
the car, my experience was inconclusive. The BlueLogger and the
application on my PDA didn't want to play ball. Sometimes I got
a satellite fix, sometimes I didn't. I know the BlueLogger is
a first rate product, so I suspect my HP iPAQ hx4700 which does
many things a bit different from older Pocket PCs. However, Street
Atlas is probably not the application of choice for the directionally
impaired who just need something simple and friendly to help them
get to where they want to go. They would quickly get lost in all
the data tables and GPS jargon prevalent in Street Atlas. This
DeLorme bundles seems meant for a different audience÷those who
already know GPS and its language and inner working, those who
already know and love Street Atlas for notebooks, or those who
want a serious, industrial-strength tool. If you fall into one
or more of those categories, you'll get an incredible bargain
with DeLorme's Street Atlas bundle #3. It costs much less than
the competition and it offers far more. And for those who use
the Blue Logger's internal data logging memory, the GPS receiver
alone is worth the cost of this luxurious bundle.
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