I have the loan of a friends PDA - an HP rz1710 that has ViaMichelin 3.1 satnav program on it.
Does anyone have experience of this or, better still, actually using it? I am looking for instructions for it and the ViaMichelin website has various manuals to download but none for v3.1 that I can find!
Any takers?
[Mods, not sure if this would be Computer Related, or IHAQ, or motoring related enough!]
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I have this (running on a Palm). It works reasonably well once you are used to it. Even if you can find an instruction manual from viamichelin, they are generally not much help.
I would suggest you just start using it and see how you get on. Presumably the version you have borrowed already has a map covering your area already loaded? You can get all of England onto a 256 card - but not all of the UK.
Things to bear in mind.
? The address search might offer postcode look up, but if you don?t have the latest maps you can?t use that feature. For an address you need to search on town then street then number within street. I think the very latest version has this sorted.
? It doesn?t have a ?re-route? option. If you find that the suggested route is blocked (traffic jam or whatever) and you want to change route, you first have to guess the likely alternative. For the first mile or so the software will desperately try to re-route you back to the original route, but if you ignore that for a couple of miles it will recalculate
? Some reviews have found that the accuracy is poor. Luckily, my experience is that the accuracy is very good. However, that is only true when you have a sat fix, and sometimes the sat receiver can take an eternity to get a fix. This is worse if it hasn?t been used for a while, or if you jump a large distance. (Eg, you switch off the unit at departure airport car park, fly a thousand miles, then turn it on again when you pick up the rental car at distant airport. This is of course exactly when you want it to fire up quickly!).
? I find the display to be very clear - it automatically adjusts the zoom level depending on your speed. Likewise, advance warning of a turn will be given early if you are at high speed.
? Another foible is if you have a staggered turn. The voice instruction will tell you about the initial junction in good time, but you might not get warning of the subsequent turn. However - a quick glance at the screen will always alert you as to what is intended. I haven?t used Tomtom or Garmin - I wonder if they cope better with junctions that appear in quick succession.
Summary. A terribly clever gadget considering the low price, but let down because the user interface is not very intuitive.
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Thanks for that, as you say I have been playing about with it a bit and got a rough idea of how it works.
One question however, how do you save addresses to the Saved Items? My pal has a few in there but he is not sure how he did it! This is the one bit that i would want to use before I set off, saving all the addresses I will be going to?
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