Palm 3207NA GPS Adapter Kit for Select Palm PDAs

• GPS adapter kit with detailed maps for select Palm handheld PDAs
• Includes maps of entire U.S. and Canada, with 4.5 million points of interest
• Delivers voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions through PDA's speaker
• Compatible with Palm TX, Tungsten E2 and T5, LifeDrive, and Treo 650
• Includes vehicle charger and car mount; 90-day warranty

I bought one of these for my new Palm TX after seeing it work on a friend's Palm T5. It is a very cool product and is as easy to use as I anticipated. I've had a lot of fun with it already, navigating familiar routes around town. The GPS device (at least in my case) finds satellites (as many as 8) in less than a minute and the Bluetooth connection works fine. It runs at least 2 hours before needing a recharge if you're using it outside of a car. The GPS unit is small enough for a pocket if you're walking or cycling. A cable is provided so you can keep it on charge in your car. My main interest is in using it while on the road in strange cities while using a rental car. I'm now quite convinced it will do that task well. The voice direction feature is very effective and only makes itself known when course changes are coming up. This generally eliminates any need to look at the PDA while driving, although a pedestal is included for mounting the PDA for quick glances. If you leave your planned route, the software rapidly recalculates to provide new suggested routing. This is a good thing, since the maps are not as up to date as I would have expected. There is a selection of voices in English, plus many more in foreign languages. I should also note that the software will run in full screen mode on the TX, either portrait or landscape and will recognize graffiti, although not caps for some reason.

This is not a perfect product. While I found the install to be easy, it was not completely clean, generating an error report on initial hot sync (problem removed as per advice I found on the Palm user forum, although I think the error is bogus). Install requires entering 3 rather lengthy keys, one of which you have to get from Tom Tom's web site to activate the product (and you had better write them down!). Tom Tom's documentation doesn't cover the TX, which is basically equivalent to a T5 but in contrast has 128Mb memory rather than 256Mb. Knowing that map files are huge, I bought a 2Gb high performance SD card I found at ZipZoomFly.com for $89 to hold the maps (the sum total of which exceeds 1Gb). The manual indicates that the user chooses where to install maps, but the install automatically sends them to the SD card. The package has 8 CDs worth of maps, but 6 of them are just individual component maps that duplicate the map data aggregated on the first 2 CDs. Loading maps via Hot Synce is very tedious, so after loading one that way, I loaded the rest via my computer using a card reader (very easy ... the software on the CDs makes this simple to do).

So what's the downside? 1. This is not a Palm product ... Palm sells it, but relegates software problems to Tom Tom, who in turn will blame hardware if things don't work as advertised, very much buyer beware. 2. The maps are not very current (I estimate 2003-2004) and Tom Tom is not providing regular up dates, either free or for sale insofar as I've been able to determine. 3. Not everyone has been able to get this stuff to work on their flavor of PDA, TX or otherwise ... I only have 2 apps on my TX other than the stuff Palm supplied (Big Clock and WorldMate), don't use VersaMail (since I can read email via the web), and don't have any other Bluetooth devices I'm using; ie. I'm not doing anything else with the PDA that might affect this product.

The ultimate test is that my wife, a technophobe, can use it successfully, which perhaps is recommendation enough.

Followup: I used the GPS while in Houston, and it greatly helped in navigating in from the International airport and around town. It probably took it 2 minutes to recognize satellites initially, after which it found them consistently in less than a minute. The only downside was where new road construction was not on the maps. I opted for an alternate route in from the airport and it nicely reset its routing to my target destination, which is where I needed the actual help. After dinner, it flawlessly directed me to my hotel. The voiced suggestions were very effective. My 4-star rating stands intact.

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I bought the item at PALM store directly and got a good discount ($160 that one day, not including the pda which was purchased earlier). Synching the bluetooth with my E2 sometimes takes 10 minutes with constant turning off both items and turning them back on if they don't sync. Sometimes a hard/soft reset is required. This could be headache-ful if you are trying to do it while driving! Absolutely do not recommned that.

On the software (which is my biggest hurdle and one that I am still getting used to)

The software is intuitive enough, colors are way much better than the $1800 bigger screen solution that came with our new Accord. However, the software takes more work to upload, not a manual written with great care nor logic. What's more, it takes a lot more digging to find out how to get to an intersection instead of a specific address. Screen layers could be improved. The address database does not include phone numbers which is a drag because if you are driving to a store, you would want to know sometimes whether they are still open. The Honda's solution is our on the road yellow pages, saves us the bucks in calling 411. This i think is a major corner cutting on TomTom's part.

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If you've got a Treo 650, You Don't Need A GPS Device. Simple as that. The smaller-than-a-small-filet-mignon gps device talks via bluetooth to your 650, which attaches to your windshield via a well-engineered holster. The charger charges 'em both, or not, as you see fit. The instructions are clear and to the point. The installation instructions are slightly out of date you don't need a card reader to make it happen, after all and the user experience is, in my case, outstanding. If you've got a 650 and you ever drive somewhere unfamiliar, BUY IT.

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The GOOD news is that this is a full featured GPS solution that is easy to mount in the car and can navigate to contacts in your address book. Maps are detailed and the POI (Point of Interest) database is fairly extensive.

The BAD news is that it all too often fails to connect via Bluetooth. Installation of software and maps is error prone (do not follow any of the 'advanced' hints in the manual they scrambled my SD card).

Only buy this product if you like puzzle solving and have a great deal of patience. If you are expecting an out of the box solution that is 100% reliable look elsewhere.

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The following design limitation needs a spotlight:

The maps are cut into sections, and users cannot navigate from one section to another. So for example, if you want to travel from Ohio to New York, navigation is not possible using both the eastern (New England) map and the midwest map because the software cannot cross the boundary of a map. TomTom has provided a haphazard band-aid solutionthey include a U.S. map containing only major roads. So even if you have the space to store full maps, you're simultaneously stuck with redundancy, and loss of resolution if you want to navigate across a boundary. Some folks who live on one of their boundary lines will want to avoid this product for local navigation.

Other issues:

* Nags. Everytime TomTom boots, Americans must click through a legal notice. North American maps do not record the fact that you already agreed previously, and there is no way to disable it (it's intentional). The European maps work as you might expect. That is, the legal notice nag screen is disabled after seeing it for the first time on each European map.

The nuisance of this nag screen is amplified by other anomalies the TomTom software is slow to boot and shutdown (since it executes directly off the MMC card). Moving the app to the internal memory doesn't improve the speed enough to make reboots acceptible. Speed is hindered further by the softwares failure to find the GPS device if the software executes before the device is powered on with 3 satellite signals detected. It also takes the device quite some time to find the satellites because of its low senstivity. When it does find the satellites, the user must exit the app and reload it, acknowledge the legal notice again, in order for the app to query the GPS on its status again.

* The software is substantially locked down, and they put the user through several hoops to get the software activated. The user ends up entering a product code and a device code (on their website) to get an activation key, which then must be entered on the device. The user is then expected to keep track of three different registration numbers if they want to be able to reinstall later. The installation software is installed on the desktop in single user mode, so if you're logged into your machine under another account, you cannot change maps or maintain the software in any way.

* If the sky is overcast with dense cumulus clouds, the device won't find any satellites because it has a SiRF II chipset (thus a sensitivity of -152dbm).

* Users must exit the application to get an address from the address book that they want to navigate to.

* The database of casinos is under populated.

* Speedcam (aka safety camera) databases are not provided. European users must subscribe to a TomTom "Plus" service to get photocop alerts. North American users must subscribe through a third party. (BTW, there is BT GPS receiver that has speed cam proximity alerts built-in, which will execute independant of the s/w).

* There is a spontaneous termination bug. I was on a course and TomTom died out of the blue. I had to rerun the app and agree to the legal notice to continue navigation. (UPDATE: It's evident from the binaries that the code was written in C)

* There is a spontaneous return to initial point bug when viewing a demo of a route.

* Given the reception insensitivity, nags, and crashes, this device is worthless as a backup GPS for aeronautical navigation. I initially thought it could be useful in a pinch in the case of an electrical failure enroute, but I would not even bother bringing it into the cockpit. A handheld with a SiRF III chipset or MK3 chipset would be more suitable as a backup.

* Software and maps are distributed on nine CDs (NA version), when they could have just delivered it on a single DVD.

* The most current maps are over two years old at the time of this review.

* Package is only bundled with maps for one continent.

STILL WANT TO USE THIS PRODUCT?

* Those who still choose to buy this product should find out when TomTom will have updated maps and buy shortly after (that is, after the old map CDs have been sold), because TomTom does not offer free map upgrades, not even one, because they want to sell maps to you seperately as a "plus" service. (UPDATE: sometimes they offer one free upgrade)

There are copious hacks for Garmin software nothing for TomTom at this point.

What's good about it?

* It mounts to a motorcycle windscreen with the suction cradle, and the GPS box can be conveniently velcroed to the master cylinder. There's no need to wire power for trips under a few hrs.

* You can get Master Yoda's voice for it.