Looking for a good maps program for my superphone. I have tried the deluxe pda maps from swift and it is of poor quality (actually the programs function is remnicient of the action of a vacume cleaner).
I have been using the Rand Mcnally Steet Maps (CD Rom) and Road Atlas (SD card). Both work well, and cause my colleagues to ask themselves, (why can't my phone do that lol).
No, unfortunately this particular software package focuses only on the interstate system. For street level views, I use the sister program Street finder.
I just got Street Atlas 2004 Handheld from DeLorme. You can d/l maps from your pc to the phone. I made a test map with my city (Galesburg, IL) and followed the road down to my parent's place which is about 40 miles going through 5 smaller towns and the resulting file on the phone is only 415k. The map is scaleable and has street level for the entire U.S. I have been using Street Atlas since it was called Map Expert many years ago and have always been impressed with the accuracy of their maps.
I also have the Palm Bluetooth SDIO card and the Earthmate bluetooth GPS. I have only done a short test drive around town, but it does work. The cpu usage must be near the maximum though, because it is very difficult to change zoom, or view other screens available (sky view, a compass/mph screen, etc) but I have not done enough tweeking to fully review this setup. I might try overclocking to see if that will speed things up.
All in all, Street Atlas is a good program and well worth the $45.
Sorry I haven't posted any more test results since last year. I use my laptop primarily for GPS navigation with the earthmate and had not really done any more experimentation until just now.
I have afterburner installed and running at 46 mhz when Street Atlas is running. I also upgraded the blue tooth program for the palm, not sure if this made any performance difference. The program did respond much better than my first test. I made a call while running the gps and was still "tracking" when I ended the call. I could close the flip, and later open it and the map was still following the my position. I did not follow any route, just driving around and seeing where the arrow was on the screen. The first position aquisition took about 7 minutes. The monitoring screen, which shows direction and speed, updates a little slower than the comparable information when using a laptop. There is a little lag between tapping for the menu and when it comes up, but it was definately much faster than my first test.
To summarize, it worked pretty well. But, this was only about a 40 minute test and consumed about 22% of the phone battery. It all depends on how you want to use it, but if you have a laptop also, the earthmate/laptop combination seems to be faster at aquiring a fix, and of course you have the ability to have the entire US on the hard drive. With the phone you are limited to a map that will fit in the phone's memory since your slot is in use. You can move maps back and forth between the phone and card with the SA program though.
A neat gee whiz item, and I think useful for spot checking your position. I plan on taking it out on the boat someday just to play with it some more, but it seem I never have the spare time. As with anything, YMMV.
edit: I thought I made a call. But actually I was not transmitting any voice. I called my office, dialed my extension and thought I left a voice mail in my box, but left nothing but silence. That might be due to not downshifting afterburner for the phone app. I will have to do some more testing to see if I can work around that.
It's not unusual for us to overclock our processors in our Flight controls, but you pay a penalty in temperature, reliability, and power consumption. Have you noticed any issues with this?
thanks
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