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- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 33 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Navman - decent hardware - poor install software"
Pros: Price - $329 at Frys
Cons: terrible install software for SmartST
Summary: The GPS software is a very much less than user friendly install. I tried using the map install software to install maps to a 512 MB SD card installed in the Navman. SmartST map install software crashed everytime but on a different map and sometimes on the same map. Never got it to work this way. Map install software will totally corrupt the SD card such that chkdsk on the SD card (while connected to my desktop) could not recover any data and I had to reformat the SD card using my desktop PC
Instead I installed the maps to my SD card while the SD card was installed in a multicard read/write USB device connected to my desktop PC. This worked fine and I got all the Western USA plus BC Canada installed on my 512 MB SD card. This method worked fine and the SmartST software recognized the states fine.
Entering destinations into SmartST is a big pain if you try via the destination input menu. It often fails to recognize major intersections or any intersections. Calling the the City "area" is confusing but you can enter area names other than cities. A workaround if you know where you want to go and just want routing is to open the map view, navigate on the map (zoom out then drag the map so that the area you want to go to is on the screen, touch the syylus to the ara, zoom back in to get details on where you want to go and then touch and hold the stylus on the destination - up pops a menu to set that as the destination for the software. None of this is in the terrible SmartST quick install guide and the help file is nearly useless.
Navman support was totally useless at solving the map down load issue and kept giving idiot responses to emails to them. They never even suggested trying loading the maps to the SD card while SD card is connected to a desktop PC via a USB reader.
Once I finally got the software installed and played around enough to get it to help route me to a destination, it worked OK but sometimes picked strange routes around the town I live in. However, when you ignore it's bad directions, it does quickly recalculate the route from the street you actually took.
At the price, it is a decent value compared to other units but you must be willing to spend 2 or 3 days just to get it working and finding out how to get the routing software to do what you want.
Like others, I have had times when it fails to find the necessary satellites - especially while moving in a car. If you switch to the GPS status display and place the unit on your dash (clear view of the sky) then it seems to work after about 20 to 30 seconds. Once locked onto satellites, you can switch back to the map view and put the unit almost anywhere else in your car and it seems to keep working OK.
The nice thing about it being a Pocket PC, you can load anybody's Pocket PC GPS software and trash the quirky SmartST if you want to (Of course paying over $100 for other software). Some other software is Mapopolis, Destinator3, TripNav, PocketMap, Copilot, GPS Tuner, etc - do a web search for these or try http://www.pocketgps.co.uk/
