Re: SA 2005, Results and Comments

From: Tony Clark (curiousgeorge1964_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/09/05 

Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 06:25:39 GMT

"GrayFox" <jayww35@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:jayww35-9963B5.16444708032005@news.giganews.com...
> I've just returned from a long cross country trip using SA 2005 for
> directions and planning, etc.
>
> In general, I found that the program is OK, but there are sure a number
> of screwy things that I don't understand. Perhaps if I understood the
> problem better, I would understand why it does some of the things it
> does.
>
SNIP

> I'd like to hear other opinions. Maybe Dan can shed some light.

I use SA2005 Handheld Edition. A couple of things I don't like. First when
there are a series of short quick turns, like when I come out of my
neighborhood heading to the main roads, the voice commands get all mixed up
and run together to a point where they are useless. Other times the advanced
warning on the turn is not enough. The voice will say 'Turn left in less
than one-half mile' and the turn will literally be less than 50 ft away.

I feel your pain on some of the calculated routes. One thing I have seen is
that they weight distance to finish over everything. On city streets this
can cause a route with many turns. They don't factor in that when a car has
to make a turn it usually has to slow down to do so thereby impacting the
total time to get to the destination.

On the handheld display I don't like the fact that they only give you two
options on which data to display. You either get a continuously cycling
display of speed, direction, location etc... or a static display in which
you cannot select the items you want displayed.

Lastly the desktop application that comes with the Handheld version is
lacking in some features such as displaying Track Logs. For that you have to
purchase the PC version of SA2005 and that seems like a waste of money given
that you have most of the features already in the desktop application that
comes with the Handheld version.

All that said I'd like to hear how it stacks up against the likes of
Mapopolis or TomTom for Palm? Is it really that much worse or do they all
have issues running on a PDA platform?

Cheers
TC

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