Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I recently went on a long train trip, and wanted a way to track my location. I considered a number of handheld GPS's for general use, since auto-based GPS's are useless once you leave a mapped road. All seemed expensive and with various issues for railroad use.
I planned to take along my ASUS netbook, and decided to try this GPS antenna/receiver combo, along with the included DeLorme mapping software. The GPS antenna will work with any GPS-enabled charting software, but I found it to be a good match for the DeLorme atlas.
The antenna worked acceptably well. Once I completed the initial almanac download, it restarted reasonably quickly with a clear view of the sky. It took longer when I used it with a train window (with half the sky blocked) or if I tried to restart it while moving quickly. It appears to be a 3 channel receiver, only locking into three satellites during the start up process. Once it established a 3D fix, it locked on to other satellites and worked very well.
The atlas seemed pretty up-to-date, with some recent road changes in my neighborhood. The interface takes some getting used to, as it works in a way very different from other maps. For example, you can't simply grab and scroll, as the cursor has other map functions that would conflict with it. You have to either use a "recenter" option, or grab a scroll function from the side of the map. Also, you cannot use the standard mouse wheel for zooming in and out, but rather draw a box around the area you want to zoom into, or use a complicated "stairway" graphic to zoom out. The map software would be greatly improved if DeLorme used a more standard interface.
The software also seems to be really oriented toward planning and saving customized maps, routes, and points of interest. Every time I tried to turn it off, I had to answer several dialog boxes asking if I wanted to save changes to the chart, points of interest, and the GPS track. These are good features, but you should be able to ignore them if you don't want them.
But aside from these quibbles, the GPS and the charting software worked very well for my purpose, and saved me a ton of money over a handheld GPS. There are no restrictions on using a GPS on a train, and many people passing my seat stopped to ask about the large, clear moving map on my seat tray. It really made my trip more interesting.
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