REVIEW COMMENTS: Medion Review

Dave · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 7:48 pm Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: Medion Review

Aldi caused quite a stir when they released this bundle, at £329.00 it appeared to be fantastic value for money and came bundled with everything you could possibly need to get up and running with a working satellite navigation system. This review aims to cover the Medion PDA and the Medion Navigator software as well as the large number of accessories included!

Aldi are well known in Germany their home country and across mainland Europe for their chain of discount grocery supermarkets. They are also known for their weekly 'specials' which can range from plant pots to in this case PDA's! In the past they have made headlines with bargain PC's manufactured by another German company, Medion and it is their name which appears on this PDA bundle.

Read the full review here
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/medion-review.php

DavidW · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 7:58 pm Post subject:

Just for the sake of clarity - this is Darren's review (which somehow went AWOL) of the original Aldi/Medion bundle, isn't it - not the more recent one.

David

ville · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 10:31 pm Post subject:

This is a Pocket PC (PDA and GPS navigation system and car kit)

with a Samsung 266 MHZ processor acording to the Medion web site, not an xscale400, my fried just bought one of these from Aldi for £270, and it's a nice little unit and works well, a bargin!

Darren · Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 7:19 am Post subject:

Yes this is the review of Aldi/Medion's very first GPS Bundle released early this year, the MD40600. Due to an admin mix-up, publication of the review was overlooked and I only norticed recently Embarassed

It is not a review of the latest bundle although except for a few minor bug fixes the supplied software is essentially the same in operation.
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Darren Griffin

Dave · Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:28 am Post subject:

It got lost in my inbox, I've just found a few other reviews so we should start seeing some more mount reviews etc shortly.

rd57chad · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 13, 2004 Posts: 22

Yes , the review is for the earlier model , not the 1's sold @ Aldi recently.
The newer unit has a much improved case & build quality seems better . The battery cover will not slide off when sliding it in the cradle . The only flaw ive noticed with it is the occasional lock up when exiting the navigation screen . A soft reset cures this...
All in all a good review - shame it took a while to surface

DavidW · Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:07 pm Post subject:

It sounds like everyone's happy - which is good. I was just trying to clarify the position.

My understanding is that the hardware in the latest deal is pretty similar to an iPAQ 1940, except that it has a serial port and no Bluetooth. However, as I haven't had a chance to compare the two machines side by side, I can't be certain on this.

David

Darren · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:14 am Post subject:

FWIW I understand the latest Medion is manufactured by Samsung.
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Darren Griffin

walpurgis · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 09, 2004 Posts: 32

... it certainly has a Samsung processor. As far as I know, the only other PDAs to use this processor are HP's 19XX series.

Curiously, when Aldi sold its most recent GPS package in Germany, a week after the UK, it was based on the same PDA as reviewed here, not the newer PPC250 model.

SteveR · Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 12:15 pm Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: Medion Review

I bought my package at the Aldi here in Holland in December and it too included the Medion MD 40600.
About the locked program - due to a cracked screen on my Medion (don't mix keys and a PDA in your jacket pocket, it's a recipe for disaster!!) I have started using a Dell Axim 5. I inserted the SD card with the main program and the Dutch maps (Holland is so small it all fits on one card!) and it installed perfectly. I have so far only been able to use the Route Planner part, as I can't get it to work with my CF GPS card. I have installed the GP Info software to run the GPS and scanned for the correct COM port (5 in the case of the Axim 5), but the program won't recognise the card. I can't use my Sapphire GPS, as the small 5 pin plug on the end doesn't fit with the mini-DIN plug on the Axim's car cable. Does anybody know where I can get an adaptor (made up)? Or the PIN settings on both sides, so I can try it myself? I haven't been able to find anybody who has a GPS which fits onto the Dell's cable, but if I do, I'll come back and report.

noggin_the_nog · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 19, 2004 Posts: 41

I have tried Medion Navigator (as supplied by Aldi) and it works perfectly on an HP2210 with Fortuna Bluetooth GPS. No activation required and it doesn't seem locked to any particular PDA or receiver. This was just for experimental purposes, of course. That particular combo now has TTN3 on it.

Darren · Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 6:09 pm Post subject:

Was this the version released recently? The original package was definitely locked to COM1 and the supplied receiver on the review unit I tested.
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Darren Griffin

SteveR · Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 8:53 pm Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: Medion Review

Mine was from December 2003. I have to admit that it took a lot of searching through the menus to find the way to change the COM port. The contrast on the headings is so little that I failed to see the little triangle / arrow for a pull down at the top of the page of the settings menu, where you can select the GPS settings, including the com port, the route planner, navigation, volume and units settings. I can select out of 16 com port numbers.

surfnutt · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 06, 2004 Posts: 2

I bought the medion sat nav ppc package from halfords for 399.00 which i think is good value,the only problems i have had are it once took me on a short cut through a country park, oh and through a private gated estate.
I also found that it tells you that you are approaching a roundabout when its traffic lights not all the time but 1 in every 5.
It also takes time to get used to judging the distance for a turn especially if the turnings are close together so keep an eye on the road name on the top left of the screen to be taken.
The biggest fault on the navigation side is the destination fields i have tried to just enter the potcode as the instructions tell you to but it wont work on just postcode information which i find as a courier covering the whole country dissapointing apart from that its got me all ovr the country from canary wharf(although at one point it showed me in the water) to glasgow and edinburgh door to door without looking at a map book,apart from the minor probs i can live with them its good value.
advice though dont waste time in high st shops to get sat nav i did that in pcworld/dixons/currys/comets etc and they had

all i went to halfords to get an air filter and there they were boxes of the things!

SteveR · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 11:19 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: Medion Review

Mine would lock up when I first got it if I used post codes or if I tried to change the route half way, before arriving at the destination. I was told about a patch on the German Medion web site, which was and still is not easy to find, but I have since read that similar patches are on the UK Medion site. Since then lock-ups have been seldom.

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