MAPS 2006

[pafarthing]

Hallo again.

Having just spent a week's family holiday in North Wales (as good a place as any to test a SatNav system), I thought I would follow up on my earlier comments on Maps 2006/VM5.

First of all, everything functioned smoothly, and the cradle was usually able to pick up a satellite fix fairly quickly. Only once, around Snowdon itself (and in torrential rain) did it have a significant problem, but I suspect that would have been true of any receiver, given the weather and the mountainous terrain. But once it had three in view, it was happy... most of the time it had a fix on six or seven.

(Incidentally, when I first installed VM5 I suffered a couple of mysterious crashes; but I think that was a PDA memory issue. Once I stopped ActiveSync from starting all the time, the problem disappeared.)

Second, the maps are up-to-date and accurate, down to indicating lay-bys ... a useful feature when travelling with another car behind, as we were. Only at a couple of roundabouts did it not announce the correct exit: at one there was a supermarket car park at the first exit VM didn't know about; the other was a road that looked very new.

Finally, the routeing (in “fastest” mode) was sensible... despite the great potential in North Wales, only once were we sent down a single-lane only lane; and that only for about half-a-mile. The rest of the time it kept to A and B roads where possible. It was particularly good getting us through Barmouth (a town which desperately needs a by-pass!), and on the day we drove round Snowdon... the only day I put my trust in it completely, without using the “Plan a route” function first and studying the result. On the three occasions I ignored its recommendations – twice deliberately, once by mistake – it silently calculated a new route in seconds... unlike the hysterics some programmes seem to go into. Occasionally it tried a couple of attempts to get me to turn round; but usually it figured out what I was doing.

I find the display clear and simple for my purposes. I notice the background seems to have three colours: a pale orange for rural areas; a darker orange for built-up areas; and a blue-grey when we were in Snowdon National Park. Bodies of water were displayed, though I do wish it showed railway lines, as they are useful features when wondering where you are.

There are niggles, however. At motorway speeds, VM will announce that you need to make a particular manoeuvre “in one mile” at about 1200 yards – I suspect the announcement is cued to “in one kilometre” when set up in Metric. While this needs to be fixed, though, you are still far enough away not to actually miss your turning.

The various display items are now clearer; but the display of actual road signs (generally accurate) on motorways is at the expense of the road number... coming back on the M54, J2 was correctly signposted “Cannock”, but with no indication that it was also the A460. It also incorrectly signs Junction T8 on the M6 Toll as “Wolverhampton & Telford”, but in this case, logic is on its side, as that is the quickest route to Telford – the local authorities, however, bizarrely route Telford traffic to the next exit.

More seriously, however, if you asked it to navigate you to the centre of a small village, which was technically part of another town, administrative or postal district, using not a street address but the “town centre” command, it mapped a route to the centre or the larger town, not the small village – in one case planning a route to Carnarfon when the village I wanted was just outside Machynelleth, some 20 miles away. The only way I found around this was to select my destination on the map, rather than from the list. On the other hand, it was very useful having the Green Guide in the POIs, and on several occasions it took my accurately to tourist attractions off the main roads.

I should end all this by saying I am not an expert or a professional driver; my only experience of other systems is as a passenger in other peoples cars. But for my purposes, VM5 is more than adequate, does not give you too much information or chatter excessively, and is a clear improvement on VM4. My main needs when I bought my IPAQ was for a PDA, so the GPS system is simply an added bonus.

Hope this helps.

[manoman48]

Thanks for reviewing this mate. I am sure this is useful for anyone considering the upgrade now or in the future.

[rod_r]

I would like to say I am generally happy.

Poi manager seemed to mess up file naming, but as this has happened I will watch it like a Hawk next time and probably raise a bug.

The speed warnings are interesting! You definately get most of the warnings you should. The point is that you also get the early warning for the one the wrong way at the next junction, "turn right 100 yards" "beep beep" and the camera is only in effect if you turn left. Now I agree that it would be helpful if I was in the habit of tearing off in the other direction to where I planned, I guess the mobile phone might cause that. I had more fun coming down the A1 M1 in late August, it was giving warnings and I thought there must have been temporary sites, Then I saw an icon just off the flyover I was about to go under, No exit without a tracked vehicle so I think this really is a flaw.

I also took the navigator to Portugal, can't do that too easily with built-in kit! I had two issues.

Firstly in a walled City "Evora" it took us to our Hotel POI straight across town. After three attempts we arrived in the main square on a footpath, the policeman was extreemly reasonable, perhaps he sees lots of us with GPS. This City is highly pedestrianised and has about four groups of gates each group serving an area perhaps via two bi-directional gates and an optional exit only. The Groups may intersect. From any of these major accesses you can get to or near the centre to be returned to the edge, there are lots of junctions for access and loading. Our Hotel was between the main square and the cathedral on a pedistrianised street, parking at the cathedral, the software tried to ake us in across the pedestrianised main square.

The second issue is Route planning, It was hopeless at time planning. From Evora we had to get to Faro in 8 hours, we had used the Motorway to get there in four hours and did not want to bore ourselves with it again.
So I tried to plan a route Departure -Beja - Mertola - Castro Marim - Faro Airport, four routes a total of seven hours. But the Lonely planet Guide showed the slow buses were faster, let alone the express buses on sectors they documented. So we tried it. We had two hours in Mertola one hour in Castro Marim and another fifteen minute detour. What is wrong? I thnk VM allows for 30-40kph average on country roads, but when it is 10k between settlements and the no overtaking signs show the scope of the corners 90kph average is much more likely when you only see a dozen cars in 50 miles.

But I still feel it does a decent job when you do not know where you are. It is bound to be a loser compared to the local expert if someone blocks something off or opens the new bypass, .

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