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| Product: Palm Navigator |
Company: Precision Navigation, Inc. |
| Web: www.precisionnav.com |
Phone: 888-422-6672 |
Platform: Palm Pilot Personal, Pro, IBM WorkPad
IBM PC-compatable (for map download) |
SRP: US$40
Street Price: same |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
This is another one of those add-ons that's helped make the Palm Pilot the
PDA of choice for so many millions. With a small clip on module (about two
inches long, batteries included) and some simple software, your Palm Pilot
doubles as an electronic compass.
To go one better, you can download as many maps as your Palm Pilot can store
in its memory and use the maps and the compass together. There is
a little configuring to do, based on your geographic location, which could be
made easier by the company. But I managed to find my latitude and longitude
following a link on the Precision Navigation site and set the compass to true north (as opposed to magnetic north) within 15 minutes.
Combining a compass and a map manager to view maps on your Palm Pilot makes
map reading a hell of a lot easier than looking at the old paper versions and
trying to figure out which direction is which. Palm Navigator may be one of
the more useful Palm Pilot add-ons for those of us who often print out
driving maps from places like Mapquest. Instead of printing, you can save them to your computer and HotSync them to your Pilot.
All that said, the Palm Navigator has a huge drawback. Despite many great
features, I found that it failed miserably in its most important application:
helping me find a location while driving. All the metal in an automobile
distorts the compass' reading so unpredictably that it's useless inside my
car. Ouch.
On foot, it works wonders. But I live in Los Angeles and would like to use the compass function as I thread my way up and down unknown streets. I tried it, but the needle was all over the place and the compass was hopelessly useless. The maps were still perfectly useable, but you don't need to buy a $40 gizmo to store maps in your Palm Pilot - there are shareware programs that do that.
To the Navigator's credit, it does tell you when there's distortion, so that
you don't have to guess whether or not the reading is accurate -- which is a
great feature but doesn't make up for it not working in either of my two cars.
I should also mention that this puppy only works with Palm Pilots HotSynced
to PCs and not with the Palm V or Palm VII. Palm Navigator requires 58K of
memory on your Pilot, plus space for maps. I don't have any other add-on
programs running on my Palm Pro, so I have room for plenty of maps. Your mileage may vary.
- Joel Brand [5/24/99]
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