Bluetooth or wired gps?

Roco · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 32

Hi Guys
yep me too! i am in the market for a Pda TOmTOm3 bundle.

What i need to know next is
What is the prevailing wisdom, either Blutooth of a wired gps?

I have a BT head set for my cell phone, which i find very unreliable, always "drops" just when you dont want it to. I know that BT is the latest tech nology and the ability to wander with nav system away from the car is a good idea (even if i wont use that every day), but i am i right to be put off by my bt phone experiences? am i better of with a wired gps untill the technology improves? is it guarenteed not to freeze or "DROP" whislt driving alone? whilst i appreciate the way you gove ballanced infomation, if you have a personall recommendation in with the balance, id appreciated it.

Roco

DavidW · Posted: Sun May 23, 2004 3:08 pm Post subject:

There's no guarantee that the system won't freeze when driving, but most people find that Bluetooth GPSes are stable enough. I can't give you a first hand report, as I use a CompactFlash GPS.

The only troublesome combination at the moment seems to be any Bluetooth GPS with the iPAQ 2210 when using TomTom Navigator 3, though with the discovery that turning POIs off helps, hopefully TomTom will soon have a fix for that.

Wired GPSes are fine - though you can't use them away from the car.

David

tom9851 · Posted: Sun May 23, 2004 3:46 pm Post subject:

Roco, don't let your bad experiences with your BT headphone put you off Bluetooth in general. I also use a BT headphone with my 6310i and also suffer from countless cutoffs/drops - a lot of it is due to the crap headsets! Some headsets suffer more from this than others. I use bluetooth with my 2210 to 6310i for e-mail/internet without any problems. Many users on this forum use BT with TomTom with few problems (notwithstanding the current 2210/TTN3 problem!). I use a wired GPS and find it very reliable indeed but will seriously consider going for a BT GPS when I come to changing my PDA. As for guarantees against freezing/dropping ... you're having a larf right?

Good luck

Tom

torque · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 4

I'm also considering TomTom 3 like Roco.

I recently got a iPAQ 2210 and Emtac BTGPS and I have found this forum to be mine of valuable information.

Currently I’m using the 2210 with Memory Map software, OS mapping and CAA charts, and in the short time I’ve been using the PDA and GPS I’ve been very impressed.

I now wish to get street navigation software and TomTom 3 appears the best for my purposes, however I’m aware, through this forum, of problems with TomTom 3 and the 2210.

I have two questions with this:

1. Could someone confirm if the problem is linked only with Bluetooth GPS and not a wired GPS, I ask this as I would like to have a wired GPS permanently fixed in my car, only using the BTGPS when flying and other uses away from the car.

2. Can the PDA be configured to link with both a Bluetooth GPS and a wired GPS and be associated with the correct software?

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

And finally on a completely different note, can a Bluetooth headset be linked to the PDA’s audio output.

bagmans911 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 26, 2004 Posts: 31

BT is just great for me, I use an IPAQ 3970 with a Fortuna Clip-on BT and have had absolutely no problems, obviously you will need to keep the BT GPS either plugged in to power or charged regularly but with 8hrs on battery for me it is not a problem. As far as 'drop-outs' I have had virtually none (TT3 did freeze a couple of times, but I do not think that was BT as the IPAQ ran a soft reset on its own!). Being able to move the GPS around the car has been of great benefit to me.

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