ARTICLE COMMENTS: CoPilot Live Jersey Trip

[Dave]

Bo Peep and Privateer recently returned from a holiday in Jersey (Channel Islands) where they used ALK's CoPilot Live v5 as the primary navigation aid. They chose CoPilot Live v5 simply because no other Navigation product for the Pocket PC covered Jersey. Currently CoPilot Live v5 is the only application running the latest NAVTEQ 2004 maps to cover the Channel Islands, so it wasn't a hard choice to make. Here are a few words of our findings of using CoPilot v5 in Jersey.

"Unfortunately we only had CoPilot a few weeks before going to Jersey. We normally use TomTom Navigator 3 for the PDA, therefore we are biased towards TomTom. Unfortunately TomTom maps (Tele Atlas data) don't cover the Channel Islands so we decided to go for another SatNav package which did, hence we got CoPilot V5 (NAVTEQ data). "

The full article is available here.

[gripp]

Thanks for a most interesting review. I take slight comfort from the fact you experienced the same bugs that annoy me:

1. freezing up when calculating a new route
2. favourites file being erased

Problem 1 is really annoying and difficult to remedy easily if you're driving alone, and at speed, and unable to fumble with a reboot. I've often had to pull over, stop, reboot, then carry on driving. I thought this might be a (lack of) memory problem, so have move nearly all my programs to the SD card until the Mitac has over 40b free memory. And still it freezes up occasionally!!!

Problem 2 can be "solved" by making the file read-only by using a 3rd party file manager such as Total Commander. This prevents new destinations being added, but once you've built up a collection of your most commonly used favourites, this is not a problem. Simply flip the attribute if you need to update the file. Also, keep a copy of the favourite file in "my documents", or somewhere, so that you can copy it back into the CoPilot directory if the original gets wiped.

Problem 3....not mentioned in the Jersey report, but intensely irritating...the failure to announce GATSOs on any return journey, or whenever the mood takes it.

The report mentions a new release: anyone have any idea if this is imminent and, if so, whether it will fix the above bugs?
_________________
Nokia E65 & TT Nav6

[BoPeep]

Hi gripp,

I'm glad you found the review useful. Yes, the freezing up problem was very annoying, particularly when you are on roads you don't know very well. We found it only really happened if we ignored the route it tried to send us on, as it's re-routing capabilities are not as good as TomTom, which re-routes immediately.

The Total Commander file manager sounds quite useful. If we ever used Co Pilot in Jersey again, we would probably look into using that. Thanks for the tip-off.

We haven't used Co Pilot in the UK much, so we don't have much experience of how it handles GATSOs. This wasn't a problem in Jersey, however, as the Channel Islands do not use speed cameras - just police speed trapping.

Regards,

Bo Peep.

[Dave]

[gripp]

Dave,

Thanks for reassurance that these problems are known about and being worked on.

I guess we'll just have to be patient!
_________________
Nokia E65 & TT Nav6

[Punchline]

I have read the report with interest, I don't have a CoPilot but a satnav on Jersey can save a lot of time and frustration. We have made several visits and I have always taken my Tomtom Go Live 550. We started by taking it on our 2nd trip mainly just to get round St Hellier as it's a nightmare. I don't know about other models but my 550 does have the Jersey map and all the streets are named but the down side is it does not recognise Jersey postcodes. I asked Tomtom 3 year ago if they would update them but for some reason they have not.
If this is any help to those planning a visit I have been taking map coordinates of places to visit as not everything is that easy to find and even going every year it takes a while for the memory to kick in. Map coordinates can be used on any device - I have logged them onto a webpage and they can be found on
http://www.raytaylor.com/Jersey_Discover_using_GPS.htm

As you can see we love Jersey.

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