Magellan GPS Companion for Palm V/Vx
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Manufacturer: Magellan
List Price: $149.99
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Magellan GPS Companion for Palm V/Vx
With the GPS Companion attached, your Palm OS Handheld Organizer becomes a complete travel tool that will not only save you time but completely removes the phrase “Where am I?” from your vocabulary. No matter where you go or what you do, the GPS Companion and your Palm organizer will provide you with all the information you need to get you where you are going. The GPS Companion is the perfect add-on for the Palm V/ Vx series of handhelds for anyone needing the combination of a Palm V/Vx handheld and a GPS receiver. The GPS Companion works equally well with either the Palm V or Palm Vx handheld. Install NAV Companion and/or Map Companion software into your Palm V Series of Handhelds and the days of folding maps and searching through endless pages of map guides are a thing of the past. Highways, streets and a host of points of interest can now be stored into your organizer and found on a map in a moments notice.
There are two solid reasons to buy a GPS: navigating unfamiliar areas by knowing one’s exact position on the planet, and the sheer coolness factor of having such a device. The Magellan GPS Companion meets both the geek chic and practical utility tests by working with an existing Palm handheld. The price is low enough that a frequent traveler shouldn’t think twice about substituting this device for bulky, conspicuous maps–although you might miss the charm of meeting strangers in unfamiliar empty neighborhoods.
The GPS Companion snaps right into the Palm V or Vx’s serial connector, and uses its own batteries to avoid running down the Palm handheld’s power. The unit ships with two software packages, one for wayfinding and navigation and another for attaching position to street maps. The unit uses the standard GPS interface, so any Palm application that can use a GPS has access to this device’s telemetry.
You’ll find yourself turning to the GPS Companion time and again. The accompanying CD-ROM includes detailed maps of the entire United States and territories and protectorates like Samoa. Maps range from a few kilobytes to several hundred kilobytes depending on the scale of detail (cities get more detail), so even if you have several megabytes free on your Palm, you’ll have to pick and choose which maps to download.
The CD-ROM has organized each map into a set of folders by state or territory, and then by county. You can also use search features in the Mac or Windows operating system to find city names, but the CD-ROM uses truncated MS-DOS style naming, rendering Poughkeepsie residents potentially out of luck unless they search on “poughkee.”
Downloading maps is as easy as adding the data file to the installer list in the Palm OS desktop application. The Map Companion application lets you choose to view maps even if you’re not in the geographic area of the map. You can also use it to delete any installed map.
The most useful combination of options in Map Companion is turning on GPS Scrolling and GPS Position from the Navigate menu. The menu doesn’t change based on whether the features are on or off–we had to rely on tiny text in the lower right that reads “GPS POS + SCAL” to show when both were enabled.
It could sometimes be hard to get a fix on our position when we were near buildings or inside. In our testing, we had to be in a clear area for the fix to take; after that, the unit performed well in a car over city streets. The up/down scroll button on the Palm can be used to dynamically scale up or down. The maps automatically add detail with street names and landmarks as you zoom in closer.
We consistently found about a four-second lag while traveling at 30 mph. And you don’t want to use this device when behind the wheel. The display requires too much attention and could cause you to veer into someone else’s lane. Hand the Palm and GPS Companion over to a navigator in the passenger’s seat.
The Nav Companion software offers wayfinding tools that allow you to mark positions and then trace your way between them. The software is rather clunky and doesn’t provide turn-by-turn information, nor does it integrate with Map Companion to let you overlay a route on top of an existing map. Nav Companion would certainly help for off-road endeavors, such as wandering aimlessly in the woods (which we are not wont to do). But given the limited battery life and the citified nature of the Palm, we doubt you’ll take this on your next mountain sojourn.
We tested the unit with a few other Palm OS applications, including the Vindigo city guide. Vindigo uses intersection information to offer contextual choices for dining, dancing, and entertainment. It worked seamlessly with the Magellan, even as we drove down a street. Vindigo kept updating intersections from its selection menu, and we could find restaurants up to half a mile away as we cruised about.
The Magellan unit is a great bargain, and relatively easy to use. It requires probably 60 to 90 minutes to become comfortable with the Map Companion software, after which it became almost second nature to use. –Glenn Fleishman
Pros:
- Full set of U.S. maps on CD-ROM
- Fast learning curve for most features
- Uses own batteries rather than tapping the Palm’s power
- Fully compatible with other Palm applications that use GPS data
Cons:
- Nav and Map Companions don’t speak to each other and use different interfaces
- Mapping lags a few seconds behind actual position while in motion
Find your way home with your Palm V or Vx handheld and the GPS Companion by Magellan. This lightweight, 12-channel global-positioning-system receiver clips onto your Palm and links up to GPS satellites in minutes.
The Companion works with your Palm to display your position on a map, track a course, and provide navigation details such as speed, distance, and time of arrival. Software is also available for applications such as golf, mapping, restaurant guides, and more.
The GPS receiver interfaces with any Palm mapping-software application that reads NMEA 2.1. The Companion ships with bundled Palm software applications for street mapping and outdoor recreation. It’s powered by two AAA batteries for up to 10 hours and doesn’t drain your Palm’s batteries. It measures only 6.5 by 3.25 by 0.88 inches and weighs only 3.9 ounces.
It comes with a user’s manual, quick-reference guide, two AAA batteries, and a CD-ROM containing Map Companion and NAV Companion software. (The Palm V or Vx is sold separately.) It’s covered by a one-year warranty.
Magellan GPS Companion for Palm V/Vx Features:
- 12-channel GPS
- Up to 10 hours of battery life, doesn’t drain Palm
- Quadrifilar antenna for better reception
- Bundled with street-mapping and outdoor recreation software
- Compatible with Palm V/Vx
Magellan GPS Companion for Palm V/Vx Reviews
High Tech Toy
I mainly wanted to use the NAV program to record and plot waypoints. As Mark noted, it’s fairly laborious — erasing the default Wpt00001 name that comes up and then writing in a new name. Worse, once you’ve marked all your waypoints, no matter what scale you use to view them, they are generally all scrunched together, so you have good data but no good way to view it graphically. Worst of all, no way to download the data to a computer. There is a PDB backup file made in your backup directory, but it’s encrypted, so if you wanted to import the data into your plotting program and make a physical map, no such luck. The only software that appears on my computer is a fairly useless help file (i.e. description of all the obvious functions but no real help with HOW to use them or what they are based on). This is one of those high tech toys that works great as a module, but not as an extension of the Palm or computer. Fortunately, I got it as part of a rebate program, and only lost $30 on the deal, not the full $100.
Too limited and with some problems
I buyed it from here, first it is very limited, you cannot transfer the data to a pc, to process it or print. The softwares are not very good.
And theres is a problem, it hangs and dont recognizes the gps, like is not attached to the palm, and you have to reinstall the software in the palm to use it. I dont like it, is not very usefull.
One of the most practical GPS product for a general consumer
The product is a clip-on attachment to Palv V/Vx. Actually you clip Palm on it but it depends on the point of view :))
The gadget is only a GPS reciever -the rest is done by Palm and the software installed on Palm. That concept is both money and wieght saver!
The benefit for those who already owe Palm is that they do not have to drag along another screen, another chip,another software….
And in contrast to stand-alone GPS units is gives a user a much bigger choice of software applications and cuts ubmellical cord to a producer what results in different (lower) prices for the softeare and widens options considerably.
Performance - good performance one woukl expect from a consumer product.
Reccomend to update the bundled softeare - a better version 2.10 of NavComp is availabe on Magellan site. Drawback - when too mny waypoints are loaded becomes reaaly slow - but that ia a softeare problem….
Lack of a solution to feed DC to Palm itself on outsoursed power is strange.
I enjoy it
Less than I expected
I ordered this as a present for my husband, a salesman who tends to get lost but loves gadgets. He was appropriately delighted when he opened it but spent all day (in Los Angeles!) hoping it would find satellites to no avail. Technical support was not helpful. The killing blow was finding out that it does not support an exact street address–it only finds streets. That, and the fact that he would need to download maps before he got in the car each time generated a return slip. Either spend more to get a robust, stand-alone GPS or wait a year or so for the price/performance to improve.
Excellent GPS
I have used this Magellan for my Palm Vx for 5 months. The Nav software is about as good as any handheld GPS. The standard Map software is Ok but it doesn’t allow for a route. I added Delorme Solus 3.0 for its mapping and route directions. Now I can’t believe what this setup will do. You can down load maps from the internet with route directions complete with turn by turn directions with an alarm to alert you when to turn. You may need to split your trip into sections to go through the cities you want and also download city maps to get more detail of city streets.
Nothing is perfect but for a [$] GPS and [$] for the solus program there is not a [$] handheld GPS on the market that will compare.
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