REVIEW COMMENTS: FUGAWI

Dave · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:12 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: FUGAWI

Please post any comments regarding the Fugawi Reviews here.

wengole · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 28, 2004 Posts: 1

Fugawi for the PC itself is an excellant piece of sotware, however, it's not really feasible to carry around a laptop on a mountain bike. Having finally got a mount for my pocket pc for my bike, I was looking forward to doing some serious testing on Portland Island. As a GPS tracking piece of software, it seemed to attain a fix and track more quickly and efficiently than my companions Garmin eTrex, and the mapping was obviously far superior. With colour for a start :P.

Howver, the main downfall of FugPPC is the distinct lack of anyway to make a precise waypoint in the field. By this I mean it is impossible to edit the co-ordinates of any waypoints. I don't know about any one else but this is extremely annoing. If someone could shed some light on the reason this feature has be left out, that would be good. Other than that does any know if it's going to be introduced in future updates?

Apart from this one upset. It's a great piece of software.

davelev123 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 23, 2004 Posts: 6

I have been using Fugawi for a little over a year. Here are some comments.

The PC version of the software to it's credit has in my opinion the best waypoint, track, and route management of any product I've tried. Ozi comes in a very close second, because in my opinion is a little over complex in this regard.

Nice little things like editable waypoint icons, geocaching support, BSB photos and marine facilities, gps receiver support, gps simulation, etc. are things that distinguish the PC version from the competition.

The alogirthim for map management is not great. MM for example has far better scrolling speeds, and Ozi can import large quantities of maps quickly. Fugawi is not terrible at this and is not the worst out there.

ENC nautical charts here in the U.S. are free, and Fugawi has integrated their use into their product. This is a real plus.

The PocketPC version of Fugawi is just shy of an abomination. Technically it will show a map, record tracks, follow routes, and create waypoints, but it does all this things with little elegance. Some consolation is the the PPC version is better than the Palm version, but that is not saying much.

MM in my opinion has the best PPC implimentation of the bunch.

Fugawi at present has no 3D functions like MM and Ozi, but for now I think this is still a novelty.

Lastly, and this is probably true of all the companies in this space, is that Fugawi is a mom and pop opperation. This is reflected in the way version releases are handled, customer service, and technical support. All of these aspects are handled sloppily.

The product is evolving, and I do not want some of these comments to be viewed too negatively. Clearly, Fugawi is adding funcionality that customers want, and is matching the desireable feature of competative products.

Combining Fugawi PC with MM PPC could possibly be the perfect product. How does a merger sound?

RoyC · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 7:23 am Post subject:

I am not as positive as you regarding the performance of Fugawi. The PPC version is poor and while the PC version is better it is totally illogical in parts and does not conform to the Windows conventions in a number of areas.

However, I wonder whether there is a difference between the Fugawi version sold in U.S. and the UK specific version sold to support our O.S. maps. Certainly in the UK their performance is grim - in my view.

Roy

davelev123 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 23, 2004 Posts: 6

Roy,

I believe the UK version is several revisions behind the U.S./Canada version.

Additionally, I believe there are restrictions on the use of OS maps (not Fugawi's problem though).

I am presently at version 3.1.4.620.

One thing I left out of my comments is that Fugawi can use a wide variety of map formats. Ozi comes pretty close with this, but MM is pretty much limited to BSB charts in the U.S.

I'll repeat though (since this is Pocket GPS World after all) that the PPC version is a bit of a joke.

The PC version could be really terriffic if it were cleaned up a bit and had the significant bugs worked out.

ajdelore · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 15, 2004 Posts: 16

I agree, Fugawi for the Palm is an abomination.

The on-map navigation works well enough, but that is about ALL that works.

Its handling of routes, tracks and waypoints is brutal. It can only record ONE track on the palm.

I find that I need to use CetusGPS for most navigation and data gathering features, and Fugawi for map viewing. And of course, that means trying to coordinate two separate sets of navigation databases -- a real pain.

Bluetooth support is annoying, since if the connection drops, Fugawi won't re-connect automatically. You need to click OK first. So, if you're not paying attention, you lose a whole bunch of track points.

Loading maps is a nightmare -- you have to take each map, manually select the area, and then export it to the palm.

To make matters worse, Fugawi doesn't read maps from the memory card. You have to hotsync them to the RAM and then transfer them to the memory card. So, this means doing about four maps at a time.

If I want to put an entire set of digital topo maps onto a 512 MB card, it is going to take me weeks.

I agree, the Windows software is good. However, I got soaked for $150 CAD because I downloaded the trial version that doesn't let you try out the palm software. I want to do more on my palm than on my desktop.

I am going to download PathAway this weekend and try it out. This software seems to keep most features on the palm device.

Regards,
Anthony

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