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GPS for Treo: TomTom Navigator Vs. Mapopolis U.S. NavCard

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As a gadget lover AND a map lover, I have long had a passion for GPS, or Global Positioning System devices. These allow you to know where you are on the planet within a fair degree of accuracy, allow you to map out a route from... See more » As a gadget lover AND a map lover, I have long had a passion for GPS, or Global Positioning System devices. These allow you to know where you are on the planet within a fair degree of accuracy, allow you to map out a route from where you are to any destination and sometimes even let you look up various landmarks or businesses or see them as you travel. My first GPS was a monochrome Garmin StreetPilot that I bought back in 2000. When I first heard that I could make my Treo 600 act like a GPS receiver back last summer, I was entreagued. When I heard the raves about a product called Mapopolis that offered voiced turn-by-turn directions and the ability to download maps for anywhere in the U.S., all for half the price I paid (including the actual GPS receiver) for the StreetPilot years earlier, I jumped at the chance! The possibility that I could use this amazing phone for yet another important need made it even more of a convergence device. At the time, Mapopolis provided the only real GPS solution that I could find for the Treo. I purchased the program and a subscription to download maps for a year and started using it immediately. Mapopolis provided many things that my Garmin (which was at least five times the size and weight of my Treo) could not do, such as those voice-prompted directions I mentioned, displaying maps in color (albeit on a smaller screen) and allowing you to actually type addresses in instead of scrolling through a virtual keyboard on the screen. While I was mostly happy with this software, the one big disadvantage was that Mapopolis's maps were county-based. You had to know what counties you would be traveling to or through if you wanted to get specific directions to an exact endpoint, and also be able to stop along the way and drive around a little without losing your map detail. Unless you are on a truely long-term trek, you are going from point A to point B, so really you only need the county-level map for where you start and where you end for a good set of directions. The other set of maps you need are state-level maps that contain the "major roads" for the states you will be traveling in. In any case, if I wanted to use Mapopolis during a trip, I would have to sit down with a map and figure out which states and counties I wanted access to. Initially I tried simply putting in all the counties between me and my destination of some 500 miles away, but due to the limitations of the program, this was unworkable. These maps are not small, of course, and with the Treos limited memory, the best place for them are on an external memory card. Luckily, when I purchased Mapopolis last summer they had just made a beta version available that made it possible to use maps on your SD card more or less painlessly. However, using the SD card, especially on a Treo 600 (as opposed to faster devices like the Treo 650), meant things generally took longer to happen. Every additional map that Mapopolis had to load and look at while figuring out your route made trips with more than a handful of county-level maps and state major road maps so slow that they really weren't worth the effort. And even with a relatively small mapset, it could still take a few minutes to map my route to work – a trip that only takes a half hour! Flash forward six months or so when I first started contemplating buying a Treo 650 (ok, maybe I was contemplating it when it was first announced in October!). One consideration I had, although admittedly not my primary one, was how upgrading would affect my experience with GPS. I knew that the Treo 650's faster processor would mean that maps would load much faster and routes could be planned much more quickly – at least in theory. I also knew that with its higher resolution screen, I could see more map in more detail, thus giving me a better idea of what was ahead as I drove, and what was around me. I didn't think at all about the Treo 650's support for Bluetooth because I simply didn't know that there were Bluetooth-enabled GPS units. Even if I did, I don't think I would have been all that concerned because after all it's simply a way to cut down on the numbers wires in your car, a feature that while nice is not a big deal to someone who's relatively low maintenance like myself! Then again, one big problem I had when using the Treo 600 with my wired GPS receiver was that sometimes a bump would dislodge a cable and if I didn't get it plugged back in quickly enough, I would have to reroute the trip all over again! Not having done a lot of reading about GPS since buying Mapopolis in the summer, I just assumed I would keep using my old GPS receiver with the Mapopolis maps. I didn't know there were other options until perusing the discussion forums again as the time neared for when I might actually be able to purchase the Treo 650. I happened across people talking about a new product from a company called TomTom. TomTom makes a stand-alone GPS unit called the "TomTom Go" which I had looked at a bit and even considered buying when I was looking at stand-alones last month after buying a new car. However, the TomTom's pricetag, even though it was one of the cheaper units out there for its full feature set, was still between $600 and $1000 depending on the store you bought it at and the options you chose, and since I knew I'd be spending a good chunk of cash on the Treo 650 soon enough, I had to hold off. I'm glad I did, because as I found out, TomTom makes software for handhelds (PalmOS and PocketPC devices) that is the basically the same as what is in their stand-alone TomTom Go. The price is also much more reasonable than any of the stand-alone devices you can get, including TomTom's. What I also had to decide was what kind of GPS receiver to buy, because as it turned out I could not use my old GPS receiver with the Treo 650 due to Pa1mOne's decision to change the port used for plugging in such accessories to the phone. Since Bluetooth GPS receivers are not prohibitive and because I heard good things about TomTom's own Bluetooth GPS receiver, which came either separately or bundled with the software and maps, I opted to get the bundle from Amazon.com and have it shipped to my house for free while I waited for my Treo 650 to get out of backorder status and get shipped to me. As it turns out TomTom's Bluetooth receiver has some of the latest GPS features, accuracy and performance enhancements via a recent chipset called "SiRF IIe/LP." (I believe an even more advanced SiRF III has just gone into production) Among its more impressive features is its ability to get a GPS signal without having to have line-of-sight to the satellites. So I can put it in my glove compartment, and since there are no wires, shut it, and it still will get a signal and send it to my Treo 650. After receiving the TomTom package and actually getting the software to work on my Treo 600 (a feat that I hadn't seen anyone even attempting), I found out that Mapoplis actually made a product that was a more direct competitor to TomTom! It was too late to return TomTom and do further research before making a decision, so I contacted Mapopolis and they were nice enough to send me their product so that I could review it for potential customers and compare it to the TomTom Navigator software and maps. Mapopolis's product, called U.S. NavCard for PalmOS, is actually an external Secure Digital memory card that contains the software and street-level maps for the entire U.S. One can also buy cards that contain only parts of the U.S. for significantly less. I felt compelled to compare the two products not only for myself but for others out there who are looking for a new (or a first) GPS system for their Treo and who may not have known about the Mapopolis product - while there's been more buzz lately about TomTom because of it being the new kid on the block and having some nice features, I didn't see much discussion about this relatively new product from Mapopolis. See less »

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GPS for Treo: TomTom Navigator Vs. Mapopolis U.S. NavCard

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