Do i get one of these?

[Stujw70]

Well it's that time of year again, my phone contract is up for renewal.

I have been after a GPS ideally a Quest as my first one for a while. But will this the job and some more?

I can get myself a O2 XDA mini s as an upgrade http://www.my-xda.com/xdaminis.html

Do i do this and get myself a GPS program, antenae, case and mount for the GS?

But the GPS programs seem to be quite expensive so should i concentrate on getting a dedicated GPS. Maybe i'm just looking in the wrong place re: cost.

Has anyone any experience of Tom Tom 5 or Co-Pilot etc on one of these. Had a look at one today they are an excellent piece of kit, with a screen slightly bigger than the quest i believe.

At least if i get one of these it would get used all the time, against how much of the time would a dedicated GPS sit around doing nowt.

Any advice or ideas for cheaper software etc much appreciated

Thanks all

Stu

 

[RAM-man]

XDA solution

An interesting thought..

I have two software/pda solution suppliers *both* asking same question. They intend to use the XDA for the bike courier/delivery service, and its being ported across, from the mini-cab/private hire market, where the XDA has the jobs listed, gps route to take which is then used for job costing/billing charge to the customer.

The mount is not a problem, it is the case/holder, I am looking at the RAM-HOL-AQ2 so long as the pda has nothing poking out from it, but power cable entry route maybe tricky or we wait and take look at the *new* RAM-HOL-AQ1 coming in 2 months.

If this solution is workable, I shall post more later.

RAM-man

 

[Stujw70]

XDA

An interesting thought..

I have two software/pda solution suppliers *both* asking same question. They intend to use the XDA for the bike courier/delivery service, and its being ported across, from the mini-cab/private hire market, where the XDA has the jobs listed, gps route to take which is then used for job costing/billing charge to the customer.

The mount is not a problem, it is the case/holder, I am looking at the RAM-HOL-AQ2 so long as the pda has nothing poking out from it, but power cable entry route maybe tricky or we wait and take look at the *new* RAM-HOL-AQ1 coming in 2 months.

If this solution is workable, I shall post more later.

RAM-man

My other thoughts were would you be able to bluetooth to an earpiece in your helmet if it was in an otter box. The battery life on one os these should be quite good . I do wonder if you can run bluetooth with the phone off to conserve battery power. You can run these units in flight mode ie software and not have the phone on.

You can get a Garmin arial & software that fits these via the slot on top.

Have just noticed you can get these units from T-mobile with co-pilot software and antenae. Maybe worth a change of contract.

Thanks for the info so far.

 

[Tomcat]

TT5

I use TomTom 5 on a PDA and it works well for car-type use - getting from A to B, navigating to full UK post codes, and it can give warnings of speed cameras (database can be downloaded from web FOC). I've also just tried TT5 with the Traffic service and this was brilliant on a recent trip through London by car - download latest data on traffic jams from TrafficMaster (via bluetooth link from GPS to a mobile phone) and it calculates a route to avoid the jams.

But for bike use TT5 has some limitations. You can't plan a route in advance on a PC and then upload it to the GPS (as you can with Garmin products). So if you want to plan a twisty scenic route in advance you have to use the TT5 itinerary function which is a bit tedious. The other issue is how best to mount and power the XDA on the bike, and with the Quest this is easy to do with off the shelf bits . On the other hand, most of the Garmin range don't have speed camera alert (tho' I think the latest products have POI alert) and I don't think they search to the full postcode.

If you want to go from A to B and don't care about which roads are used, and you want POI alert (speed cameras) and perhaps the traffic update function then TT5 on the XDA will be a really neat package.

HTH
TC