CoPilot live V4 - First impressions

ColinS

Having just migrated (a word to suit all) to v4 and had a couple of trips now. I have some initial comments/questions.

I think the first fix times are marginally quicker.

I like being able to see the ETA when I’m stuck in a traffic jam or nearly at my destination but with the map screen displayed. (That is when I tend to need it the most).

At last I can build a trip on my PC and copy it to the PDA.

Where is the female voice?

The side of road notification is no different than it was in 3.5.

Has anyone been directed to change lane yet? I have not and at some of the junctions I drove through, I would definitely expect to be.

POIs are generally pretty cool if you don’t use them to detect speed cameras. I’m getting paranoid now, there seems to be thousands of speed cameras on the way to London. Some are possibly off route but others are definitely on route and don’t exist. Have they perhaps got an insight into where they are planning to be installed? It does tend to keep your speed down though, so I guess it does the job. I managed to lock it up by pushing random on screen buttons at one point.

I tried it out in walking mode from Ravens Court to Shepherds Bush and it worked well. Surprisingly I never got mugged, but it did cross my mind that I was being a bit foolhardy at one point.

Why did it tell me that the “Southbound Winchester services were approaching” when I was travelling northbound?

Why did it tell me that the “Southbound Winchester services were approaching” again after I was about ½ mile past them and still travelling northbound?

It may be my imagination but I don’t think it zooms to the same magnitude as before. I wish it zoomed more when slowing down for a turn in any case.

It is a bit more sluggish but that is not surprising as it now has to do more.

The waypoints are useful but only because the routing will not use unnamed roads unless it absolutely has to.

The satellite display page is more friendly and no longer gives me information that I don’t understand or need.

I shall be interested in other people’s views.

Colin

TheGoodMan

I have also upgraded to CoPilot V4.00. Apart from minor faults/bugs the product does seem to do its job properly. Unlike some other GPS product at least CoPilot 4 does not seem to have many bugs. Hopefully we will not see updates like 4.5.56 etc or it does not work with this and that.

However I still do not like the display of maps on screen it can be difficult to read at times. A part from this the CoPilot v4.0 is a good product with a few reported problems.

The goodman

ColinS

There were a couple of features that did not seem to be present:

1) The female voice.

2) Change of lane notification.

Have other people found these?

Colin

Thud

For the female voice:-

1. Uninstall Pocket Speech from your Pocket PC.

2. Find the file TTS.CAB on your desktop PC at C:\Program Files\CoPilot Live\PocketPC4_EU\CEQStart\English\TTS_Female

3. Copy TTS.CAB to "My Documents" on your Pocket PC.

4. Browse to "My Documents" and single tap on TTS.CAB to install the female voice.

I haven't verified this because I was told the female voice isn't as loud as the male voice and so isn't as good for in-vehicle use. If you do try it, let us know what it sounds like.

ColinS

Thanks Thud. I've installed her, only took two minutes. Her name is Jessica and she is a little quieter and very American. I will give her a bash in the car (so to speak) and report back.

One strange thing though - She pronounces "miles" correctly.

Colin

Thud

Thought I'd try out the female voice and went on to try out the wav files and the US male voice. When I returned to the UK male voice and tried it out, it must have had some speech lessons because it is now pronouncing miles correctly. I can't even begin to explain it so maybe my test was at fault.

It would be interesting to know why the US male voice requires a file of 4.2MB and the UK only 1.8MB.

Dave

They talk slower than us!

ColinS

Well I put up with Jessica’s whining for about 10 miles. Unusually for a woman, she was somewhat quieter than ‘Roger’ and as I did not like to ask her to repeat herself, Roger is now back. I felt that it would have been my fault if I had taken the wrong turning and could not possibly blame it on the software. Maybe that’s why they chose a woman’s voice!! I’m much more relaxed driving again now.

Thud, I wonder what you did that I didn’t because I tried the US male voice and then reverted to ‘Roger UK’ and he still can’t pronounce miles. The only thing that I have not done is tried the wav files but I understand that the detail is lacking with these.

Colin

Thud

Colin,

My test was to replay a previous journey using the "GPS Tracks" feature and it pronounced miles correctly. However, this evening I enabled the POI alerts for speed cameras while standing outside and it pronounced miles incorrectly. So the pronunciation of miles seems to depend on where it appears and was not affected by re-installing the male UK voice.

naquada

used mine for first time today poi pronounces it incorrectly general instructions pronounce it right.

New roger is definately harder to understand than 3.5...

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