- 12 Channel Receiver
- MCX External Antenna
- Vehicle adapter
- 30 Hour Battery Life
- SmartST
I have a Palm Tungsten T2, and bought the Navman GPS 4460 to provide GPS capability for the occasional road trip and/or business trip. I had also considered the Delorme Earthmate, but decided against it based on some feedback on the web regarding the accuracy of the maps and lack of voice guidance. The one review I did find on the relatively new GPS 4460 convinced me that this was worth investigating.
The GPS 4460 comes with the GPS receiver unit, a couple of mounting brackets for the receiver and the Palm PDA, a memory card reader, a 12V car adapter for the receiver unit, 3 AAA size batteries, and 4 CDs of software/maps. The receiver unit fits nicely into its associated mount, which can then be easily attached to the inside of your rear window. This assembly is held in place to the window by a suction cup. The PDA can then ride up front with the driver in it's own cradle (usually plugged into a cigarette lighter socket).
The software for the PDA is excellent, as are the maps (as far as I've tested them, that is). Entering destinations is easy once the maps are loaded onto the SD/MMC card (which you must have and is not included in the kit). The voice guidance is clear, if a bit confused at times (i.e. it can ask you to bear left and make a right turn, even though the visual map indicates that you should keep going straight). The best work round for this, as always, is the judicious use of common sense. The visual cues (when you can safely look at the display while driving) are also excellent. As a PDA is used as the output/display, screen contrast, brightness and audio volume are are limited by the PDA you have on hand. So far the T2 has performed acceptably except in bright sun light (when the display becomes nearly unreadable).
Now for my MAJOR peeves with the system the installation software and instructions are UNFORGIVABLY bad. First, you need to purchase a SD/MMC card for map storage etc this is not provided in the kit. Second, installing the desktop software crashed my computer (because it tried to it's own drivers for an existing card reader I had in place something I had to go back and fix). Third, when I tried to activate the software (and followed instructions on the screen and quick start guide), it was in no way clear that THE SD/MMC CARD SHOULD BE IN THE CARD READER AND NOT IN THE PALM. What activation does (I'm surmising from experience) is to install the license key onto the SD/MMC card. Once that is done, the software on the PDA will work (because it sees the key when the SD/MMC card is in the PDA) and the Map transfer software will work (because it also sees the key when the SD/MMC card is in the card reader). Fourth, I got memory errors on the PDA when I first tried to run the software (which were fixed with a soft reset, but none of this was clearly mentioned as a remote possibility).
So in closing the unit is working great now that I have it running. Getting it up and running was a problem as noted above. Some better/clearer documentation on the installation front would have been nice. Had it not been for the lousy install, I'd have rated this as a 5 star product.
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The maps and GPS receiver function well, but the software has several obvious omissions that undermine the true potential of the system:
1). Doesn't allow listing POI's by distance from your current location instead it lists all POI's in the database in alphabetical order. When in an unfamiliar area, I'd like to be able to select restaurants or gas stations and have the software list all available sorted by distance from my current location, rather than requiring me to know the exact names and locations. I mean, for a gas station, what's more important, the name or how close it is? (Especially when you're running on fumes in an unfamiliar area).
2). Lack of integration with native Palm software applications, most notably the address book/contact database application. It really should be able to link to the address book to plot contact addresses that is such an obvious omission. It doesn't even allow you to copy and paste addresses into the navigation software.
3). Tapping on a location or POI on the map causes a pop up menu to appear that allows you to see the name of the POI or street and to select it as a "departure" or "navigate to" point or to add it to your favorites, but a more helpful and useful feature would be to have the name, address and phone number pop up and to offer the option of adding that information, not only to the favorites list but also to the Palm's address book for future reference and use.
4). Lack of road-type options. It allows you to avoid toll roads and urban areas and allows you to select either quickest or shortest routes, but having the option to select most or least use of freeways or side streets would really be helpful...as well as having the ability to reroute around traffic congestion.
5). The POI feature does not allow text entry searching, instead you start with "country" then "category" then "type" and finally "area". Having the ability to type in a name or partial name would be very helpful when trying to locate specific points of interest...like a restaurant. For example; a search for a restaurant in Dallas, TX requires you to go to the Points of Interest screen, select a country, select a category (Food and Drink), select a type (restaurant) and then provide an area to search. If you type in "Dallas" for the area you are provided with a list of restaurants in alphabetical order through which you may scroll down four screens which doesn't even get through the "A"s...so, unless you only like eating at restaurants that have names beginning with either numbers or letters from "A" through "AL" then you won't be finding what you want on this software. Attempting to narrow down the search by entering a zip code for downtown Dallas just makes the software default to listing every restaurant in the state again only four screens of scrollable selections hope you like eating at restaurants with numbers for names. As a result of this problem, the POI feature is basically useless.
6). The company does most of its business in Europe and that fact is evident by the software's menu layout, some menu items and the use of European spelling (i.e. petrol stations, exhibition centre). This product was clearly ported over from European versions of the software and was rushed to the US marketplace without adequate "real world" testing and as a result, the final product much more resembles a playful toy than a serious tool. In fact, you could say that a more appropriate name for the Navman SmartST software would be the Navman DumbST software ;) The software translates fairly well for the most part, but I'm hopeful that future versions are more tailored to the way Americans think and the way this country is mapped out.
Though no application is ever a panacea, there are just a few too many compromises required with this particular system to justify keeping it. I plan to return my Navman in hopes of finding a Palm GPS system that's more feature rich and better integrated with the Palm computing platform's applications.
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Dylan Spears review is an excellent one. This is product is certainly not for serious use. Software needs lot of work. GPS box is pretty good. Always gets a fix and bluetooth connection is reliable. Navman is going to come up with a new software release in late summer.
Other shortcomings of this products are
1) Lack of charger adapter for Palm. They could have easily used a Y style cable and plug to charge palm.
2) Software always chooses the same route irrespective of the routing option (Fastest / Shortest) chosen. e.g. San jose to LA always picks 580 to I-5. Shorter route is 152E to I-5.
3) Suction mount for GPS is inconvenient. Power plug and the indicator is on the glass side. You have to hunt for power switch to turn it on and then in day time it's hard to figure out whether it is ON or not.
4) GPS hw always turns off even if external power is present. You always have to turn it on. Kind of annoying.
5) SW crashes often. It will start repeating a turn again and again and again then die.
6) Suction mount for PDA has wrong orientation if you want to mount it on the windsheild left to your steering (best position). Glue on Plastic base is not heat resistant. Falls off in an hour if you leave your car in sun.
7) Database errors. Out of 10 destinations 3 were wrong. They were not in a new area.
8) Limited display option. You can not see time and distance to destination at the same time.
9) Does not understand zip code. Takes lot of time to enter an address.
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I was looking for a Palm pda based vehicle navigational system and researched the market for gps products. I short listed three products delorme bluelogger, tomtom BT navigator and navman 4460. The delorme was cheaper but lost on maturity of product, quality issues listed on their forum and did not include pda and gps mounting accessories.
The tomtom was comparable to navman but did not have replaceable battery! I decided on Navman 4460.
The install is not straight forward but quite confusing. The software initially failed to download maps and gave a confusing error message that application is corrupted. I had inkling that it needed software keys installed and that did the trick.
Once the software was installed, it worked fine. But I could only use only a part of Tungsten T3 screen. It needed another software download to get full screen usage. Why it was not part of initial install? It beats me as the required files are included on CD.
The software is easy to use. The GPS fix is immediately obtained. It is very easy to set destination and navigate. The PDA mounter and gps windshield mounter are suction type but really solid. The pda mounter is not a true ball and socket joint type but it is not really a problem. The bluetooth works fine. The auto-rerouting works great. The db is pretty good.
I am very happy with software but after some usage found the following features lacking:
1. Ability to avoid certain areas or road stretch is not available. One of the big reasons I got it is to avoid traffic jams.
2. The Router Demonstrator could not be speeded up! The path could not be manually navigated on screen! It is pretty useless without these two features.
3. The Map panning does not work very well. Many times it does not move the map. The map of a large area could not be easily viewed.
4. There is no desktop routing or map software. It would have been so much convenient to view/plan routes and maps on big desktop screen.
Despite the lack of above features, it is a great product and has worked flawlessly. I am taking one star off for install and lack of some features.
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I ordered this knowing that it wasn't listed as compatible with my Tungsten T5. I tried many times to get the software to work but it didn't. I ended up installing Mapopolis software and have been using it for over 6 months.
The Navman works perfectly with Mapopolis on my T5. The receiver is very small and sits on my car dashboard. It is small enough that you could put it in a coat pocket or purse if walking around. Battery life is great I haven't timed it but I'm sure it is around the 15hrs of active use that other people have found. If you are just an occasional user like I am, this translates into months of use before the battery dies.
My only complaint is that they never bothered to update their software to make it compatible with the T5.
