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Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 12:25 am Post subject: Viamichelin X-950 - Opinions?
Hey guys, im looking for any reviews/bugs/opinions about the Viamichelin X-950.
Judging by the demo on their website they seem to have gotten the handling of TMC down right. Audio alert, text description a couple of buttons of what action to take. Seems brilliant to me, if it works ok!?
also, the guides seem pretty cool!
So, it all comes down to the basics, does it hold a good signal (SS3 i think?), is the software easy to use, how simple is POI upload, and how does it handle Speed Cameras?
Hey guys, im looking for any reviews/bugs/opinions about the Viamichelin X-950.
Judging by the demo on their website they seem to have gotten the handling of TMC down right. Audio alert, text description a couple of buttons of what action to take. Seems brilliant to me, if it works ok!?
also, the guides seem pretty cool!
So, it all comes down to the basics, does it hold a good signal (SS3 i think?), is the software easy to use, how simple is POI upload, and how does it handle Speed Cameras?
thanks in advance
Jay*
I have an X-950T. I bought it because it seemed one of the cheapest ways to get both a speed camera database (via pocketgps) and automatic re-routing around traffic problems (with a life-time subscription to TMC included in the price).
It is also small: with an open car (Megane CC) I wanted something that did not draw attention to itself even when there is someone in the car. In fact, by sticking a piece of shaped hard foam to the back, it fits neatly inside the binnacle. (Though I had to modify the power connector to fit, so as not to have to rely entirely on the battery.)
Satellite reception is fine (even behind the reflective windscreen and inside the binnacle).
I didn't get it for the Michelin Guide PoI's, but the petrol stations and cash machines are quite useful.
For safety cameras I use the pocketgps database and set the software to give sound warnings (on just this class of PoI's) at 30 seconds and 10 seconds. It works well, though you do get some false alarms from cameras on the other side of the road or on different nearby roads.
Finally, I uploaded my first pocketgps database without any problems, but yesterday it refused to accept the most recent update, giving a pretty unhelpful MapSonic error message. Deleting the old files didn't help. Moving the map to a 1GB card didn't help. Using SD Manager to reinstall the application and then the map didn't help. I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling everything. That did work. Not sure what I'll do next time. (Also take note of the instructions elsewhere in this forum to change the extension of the uploaded files from .ppi to .poi)
There have been some pretty harsh reviews - rightly so, I think. I will elaborate ...
Navigation
----------
One thing that several reviewers have noticed is the occasional bizarre instruction to 'turn right', say, at what is no more than a shallow bend in a road without junctions. I had several of those early on, but not so many recently. So it is more tolerable than I first feared.
Its idea of 'town centre' can be a bit bizarre as well. For the centre of Old Hunstanton it tried to take me down an unmade private road to a farm in the middle of nowhere, some way from either Old or New Hunstanton. (Incidentally, Google Maps gets it spot on.)
The manual says you cannot use the 'shortest route' for navigation. I think you can, but see later on the manual.
One good thing: redirection after recalculating a route is generally quick and accurate. Only once have I had a 'turn back' - and after all, it is only following your directions to get there as quickly as possible.
TMC
---
The literature implies that the external FM antenna will give better TMC reception. Well, that is strictly accurate I suppose, because you get barely any signal without it. Indeed I have not got TMC to work anywhere in the UK without the aerial. So far, I have not had any automatic re-routing, so I cannot tell how well that works. However, TMC does take up yet more screen real estate - including the area where the PoI warnings are displayed. (Not the icons: the 30s to safety camera, for instance.) I rely more on the sounds for PoI warnings, so that in itself is not a problem - it just exacerbates the map area problem (see later).
User manual
-----------
The user manual is user-hostile. The structure was presumably designed by a computer programmer rather than a user, so it is set out by function tree, rather than by likely modes and patterns of use. The terminology in the manual does not match that used in the device. E.g. the manual says 'options' but the device says 'settings'. Some important usability facts are hidden away among unimportant trivia. E.g. the fact that tapping on the navigation map brings up the options screen for that mode. Or that some of the soft 'screen buttons' are toggles rather than ways to access options.
Software
--------
The interface is a complete and utter shambles. What a mess. I am trying to draw up my own 'map' of the options available on each screen, so I can 'navigate' my route through the menus. It helps to realise that the terminology is different from that in the manual. (!)
The menu navigation is inconsistent, which just adds to the confusion. For instance, if you tap on the screen for options, to get back to navigation you will sometimes find:
- a soft button at the bottom for 'navigation'
- a screen option to 'return to navigation'
- a 'back' button.
And sometimes you will find that 'back' takes you back to the main menu and you have to re-enter your navigation requirements all over again.
A huge amount of the screen area is taken up with stuff you probably don't need and can't get rid of. In my case, I can't read a lot of the information without reading glasses anyway, and I don't want to be taking glasses on and off while driving! The 'next manoeuvre' at top left is really useful, but the various options along the top - time to arrive and so on, I'd gladly sacrifice for bigger text for the distance to next manoeuvre. The band below that - maybe 25% of the total area - is used to tell you the name of the next road you'll turn on to - in a really tiny font, with empty space all around it. Why oh why oh why??? There is also a (narrower) band along the bottom to tell you what road you are on. Again, why must it always be there? I can see some folk might want it some times, but you should be able to turn it off to get more map area. As it is, you get barely 50% of the already small screen (30mm out of 54mm) for the navigation map - less with TMC information showing.
The external buttons are pretty handy. But why is one of these used for 'history' (and then only the last 10 locations) rather than 'favourites'? I can see myself over-using the word 'bizarre' for some of these design decisions.
The soft buttons to zoom the map view are way too small for use without the stylus. You'll drive off the road trying to get a finger-nail in precisely the right spot. And have you tried using a stylus at 60 (mph - not years - though that too I suppose!).
The software is not robust. It sometimes goes into an apparently endless loop of recalculation, and it crashes and reboots itself from time to time. (Typically this happens when going from planning a journey to navigating, but I can't work out a repeatable pattern.)
I wanted to be able to get PoI warnings without having to set up a route. Aha! There is, in theory, a 'free map' option - which means that you can display your position on the map without calculating a route and without getting navigational commands. In theory. In practice, this blanks out after a few minutes if it is not plugged in. When I enquired what was going on of the Michelin help-line, I got a completely unintelligible response, but persevering I worked out that they meant that I had to have the power cord plugged in. This was not as much a blow as I feared, because it turned out that you don't get PoI warnings in journey planning or free map modes anyway. Ho hum.
So to get PoI warnings without navigation I now 'navigate' to a dummy location (anywhere in roughly the right direction, so it isn't recalculating all the time). I then turn down to zero the volume for 'general' and 'voice instructions'. So it's a fag, but it works after a fashion.
I knew when I got it that it didn't support multi-point routing. That is more of a pain that I realised it would be, since I like to take cross-country routes. But by carefully adjusting the speeds it works on for various types of road, and by 'planning a journey' in advance to see where it intends to take me, so I know where to ignore the directions and force it to recalculate, it's not too bad.
Summary
-------
So, on balance, for my requirements I don't know what else I might have got that would be better for the money. I don't intend to change it in the near future - especially after I've invested so much in understanding how to get it be usable. But my view of Michelin is transformed. I'd always thought of them as a professional outfit. The design of the X-950 is a disgrace.
UPDATE on updating poi databases
--------------------------------
In my previous post I mentioned a problem updating the poi databases, including pocketgps. Since reinstalling the software I have not had the same MapSonic errors, but I have had other problems.
First, if the file extension on the X-950 is the original .ppi, and you try to import the new file with the same name using PoI Manager, you don't get a 'Do you want to replace this?' message - which is very surprising. You have to delete the original file by hand (with Active Sync).
Second, having deleted the older file and changed the extension of the newer file to .poi, you sometimes don't see the icons on the map at any zoom level. If you search for one of your new PoI's (but don't select it - see next comment) you will see all the PoI's in the new file listed. They just don't appear. But this is not consistent. I have about 6 non-Michelin categories, and sometimes some categories appear and some don't, and sometimes other categories appear and others don't. I can't discern any pattern. Weird. What *seems* to fix it (so far) is to perform a hard reset on the X-950. It's a drag having to reset everything (road speeds in particular), but it does seem to be a repeatable work-around.
Third, one or two folk have noticed that they get a MapSonic error when they search for and then select a non-Michelin PoI. It has been suggested that this might happen if the co-ordinates for a PoI are too far from a road, but it happens with ALL my non-Michelin PoI's, many of which are right on the road. This means you can't use a non-Michelin PoI for a departure or arrival when planning a journey; you can't navigate to it; and you can't find it on the map. I have reported the error to Michelin and am waiting for a reply.
Bob
PS. I just got the viaMichelin newsletter, including a plug for the X-950 describing it as "very easy to use". I leave you to form your own judgement.
FURTHER UPDATE AFTER CORRESPONDENCE WITH MICHELIN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You do NOT need to change file extensions from .ppi to .poi after importing .asc files.
Sure - that means you can see them in the POI list, and the icons appear on maps, but if you try to navigate to any of them, you get a MapSonic crash.
If you leave them as .ppi, they appear (complete with any new categories you chose for them) in the SAVED ADDRESSES list. Well, waddya know?
And then you can do all the usual stuff - have them display or not, set up warnings or not, AND navigate to them.
And when you attempt to import an updated version of a .asc file, you DO then get a message asking if you want to replace the existing file. So it all works fine, really, when you know how.
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