Which Ipaq and GPS (I have 3780 & 2210)

gjchester · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 30, 2004 Posts: 10

I bought a bundle of a HP 2210 and wired Tomtom3 / car kit in Pcworld with there offer (£300 for the lot). I have 14 days to change my mind and before I start installing everything got to thinking...

Work has given me a 3780 ( had it a couple of years really), and I use it daily to hold work email and calender as well as contcts. I have 2 cradles at different locations so there is a cost to moving to the 2210 that is not exactly small. I also have a dual PCMCIA back to give me a image tank 'cos it can hold a CF adapter and my 5gb hard disk, so I can transfer digital photo's on holiday. It's already windows mobile 2003 and gets used daily for work so not having a link to my work system is not an option. I lose this ability to move photo's if I move to the 2210, and I'm not carrying 2 pda's around all day. So to get to the same place as I have would cost £100-200

Now I can return the bundle and get a Tomtom bluetooth GPS, (the 3780 has BT built in) and the bundle would cost me £160 plus a mount, but I don't really need a mount as bluetooth means the pda can sit anywhere if it has voice prompts, as long as I plug it into the car. (Have the pda car charger cable too)

I'm also tempted to buy the Fortuna GPSmart which with tomtom3 will cost around £180 'cos that has the LCD display and can be used seperatly, the tomtom kit I have with thew 2210 cannot really be used as handheld as it needs the cradle to connect the reciever to the Ipaq

Has anyone experience of how tomtom3 runs on a 3870 with the bluetooth GPS's and using it with checkpoint as a speed camera detector. I'm not wedded to tomtom, but that seems the most common and the bundle is cheapish.

I'm not new to GPS, I have a Palm 3 with a add on RandMcnally GPS jacket, It's been around the UK and to Ireland and Canada with me and the only think I'm really after is updated maps and colour and voice. I used TomTom Citymaps and Routemaps with that and it worked well so I'm biased to Tomtom. I liked the fact I could unclip if from the car and used it handheld, which is usefull in places you cannot get round by car (Cornwall had some times like that and we used it in handheld mode to find the hotels in the middle of St Ives).

A Bluetooth solution would also let me link to my laptop and use autoroute as well.

Anyone got any insights?

Thanks

DavidW · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 4:13 am Post subject:

Firstly, I'm sure you mean that the iPAQ you have from work is a 3870 (I don't think there was any such model as the 3780). No 3700 series model got a Pocket PC 2003 upgrade, either.

The 3870 is not a bad machine at all - though it does have three drawbacks over the later 3970. Firstly, the 3870 has a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110 processor, not the 400MHz PXA250/255 XScale processor of the 3900 series. Secondly, the 3870 has a particularly slow SD memory card implementation - it only supports 1 bit mode, not the faster nibble mode. Thirdly, I'm pretty sure that the 3870 has a rather inferior screen to the 3970 and later models, which might be important in car.

The 2210 is similar to the 3970, in that it has the various enhancements mentioned.

The 2210 has a CompactFlash slot - so the use of your 5GB PC Card hard disk is out, but you could use CompactFlash cards from your camera in there.

If you're happy with the 3870 setup, even though it's pretty bulky, there's no particular reason to stop using it, especially if you're happy to put your maps on a CompactFlash card in one of your dual PCMCIA expansion pack slots, which will get you round the slow SD slot in the 3870. If you're thinking of TomTom Navigator 3, don't put the maps on your PC Card hard disk - Navigator will most likely be unbearably slow if you do.

The GPSmart is not the smallest of units - maybe a displayless Bluetooth GPS and some software that simulates the function of a GPS with display may be a better buy - though that's up to you.

If you decide to let go of the 2210 bundle, there may be someone in the forums willing to buy it off you rather than you return it to PC World - this offer is in limited supply and finishes on Tuesday.

David

gjchester · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 30, 2004 Posts: 10

Sorry for that mistake.

My other thought is when work replaces the 3870 a bluetooth solution will mean I don't have to re-shell out for more connecting cables. (I got hit by this with the palm, when they upgraded me to a palm V I had to "borrow long term" the old 3 I had to keep the GPS ability.

The size of the gpsmart is not an issue it will be in the car most of the time, the fact it has a display menas I can use it out of the car if need be.

I didn't know about the sd slot being slow. The jacket for the ipaq also has it's own battery (so the HDD doesn't drain the ipaq quickly) which is probably a blessing,,

I could sell it on here I was going to ask at work too, that's why I havent put navigator on the old pda 'cos at the moment it's all still sealed and I guess once you install it and register it no-one else can install it..

DavidW · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 4:08 pm Post subject:

The activation rules for TomTom Navigator 2 or Navigator 3 are:

You can activate once.

Following this first activation, you have to wait seven days before you can activate another device with the same serial number.

Following the second activation, you have to wait six months after your last activation before activating another device with the same serial number.

It is therefore feasible to activate both your iPAQs, though if you read the licence agreement you will see that you are only allowed to have Navigator installed on one system at once. It will also mean that you can only activate another device six months after you activate the second device.

However, if you're going to sell the pack on, it's best to leave it sealed.

So far as cables go, all iPAQs from the 3800 series onwards use the same cable, though they are different sizes, which means if you're going to go for the better PDA specific in-car mounts, you'll need a different mount for each.

That said, your thought of using Bluetooth for the GPS is not a bad one - don't forget, though, that for prolonged use you will want to supply power to the GPS in car.

At one point, I would have been interested in your 5GB PC Card hard disk, but I can't see much point in buying one now as the new generation of iPAQs that will be with us later this year seem very unlikely to have expansion pack support and will therefore have no PC Card support.

David

gjchester · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 30, 2004 Posts: 10

Hi

The card's not for sale Smile

.. It was just last holiday (3 weeks ago) I took 600Mb of images and all I do it, is rather than carry loads of storage cards (the camera can only take a 128mb card) I just put the card into the ipaq and transfer all the images across to the hdd. Hence I can take as many as I want on holiday and then come back home and put them on CD. Frequently what looks OK on the small lcd on the camera is blurred ot fuzzy on the PC, (usually nighttime images). Having the card means I can store as much as I want. I've a 3MP camera, once Minolta bring out the 6MP (or more Digital SLR) the files will probably take 1gb or more for 2 weeks holiday.

I could replace it with an image tank (and effectivly thats what I'm using it) or I could go to a microdrive, but it's more cost to replace something I have already.

I'm pretty much decided against the bundle, my only concern is will tomtom run OK on the slower IPaq and still be usable, as it's no use to me if it tells me directions after I've passed the turning. Given I want to sell the bundle I'm unwilling to unseal the TomTom software as it would make it harder to sell afterwards.

Gavin

andygrove · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 4:51 pm Post subject:

I personally would keep the 3870. I use my 5550 for exactly the same purpose as you, but that's all I use it for. General day to day I use a 2210, including GPS work. Unfortunately the 2210 will not run the PCMCIA hard drives, even with a CF-PCMCIA adapter. Something to do with the voltage not being high enough. Even the Extended battery does not help.

The 5550 stays in my camera bag until I run out of memory in the camera (1gb CF runs out remarkably fast when shooting RAW). The benefit of the IPAQ solution when using it for image storage is that you can doi a first cut on image deletions on the IPAQ when you are away, or flying or waiting for the usual airport delay to finish.

The downside is that it's a bit bigger than a normal PocketPC (OK a lot).

I use GlassLantern's Pixfer and PocketLoupe and find them excellent to Copy and then review the images.

Andy

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