Strengths: Their competition (CoPilot, etc.) has a better product.
Weakness: extremely non-intuitive, Low quality hardware, no support after 90 days
Call me dumb for buying the new Earthmate, I have been a user of DeLorme Hardware (Earthmate) and Software (Street Atlas) for a number of years and have NEVER BEEN IMPRESSED. I have spoken to their product manager, who only had excuses for the poorly designed Street Atlas software.
- Street Atlas is extremely non-intuitive, and has no basis in any Windows or MAC standards. Delorme designed a completely proprietary, non-ergonomic user interface.
- Their drivers are hard to install and require manual Windows Registry procedures to uninstall.
- Previous versions of the EarthMate receiver sold only last year have components that are no longer supported.
Don’t expect to be very impressed with an out of box experience.
Don’t expect any reliable support. Once they have your money, their meager customer “support” can only quote the miserable 90 day warranty.
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Delorme Earthmate GPS 95/98/Me
Strengths: Small, sensitive, powered directly from the USB port, has USB->serial compatbility driver layer for old software.
Weakness: The provided suction cup doesn't stick to vinyl, but it doesn't matter since the unit has a non-slip rubber back.
I've been extremely pleased and impressed with both the GPS receiver and the provided Street Atlas USA 2004 software.
I've always used MapPoint and Streets & Trips (both by Microsoft) and was very used to their interface. After spending 20 minutes playing with Street Atlas USA, I figured out all of the functionality and couldn't be happier. I like the fact that the Street Atlas USA software interface has readable tabs and everything is just a simple click away instead of having to figure out mysterious-looking icons that MapPoint uses. Street Atlas USA also has more keyboard shortcuts, which really come in handy when you're driving.
The software has speech-recognition support built in and works well enough. You can say commands such as: zoom in, zoom out, where are we?, are we there yet?, again, shush, next turn, map left, map right, and many more.
Street Atlas USA also has speech capability. It speaks upcoming turns, distances, and time, and was highly accurate. It's extremely nice when you don't have someone else in the car helping you navigate.
I drove from Columbus, Ohio, to Fairfax, Virginia, and back with this GPS & software the first day I had it. The entire trip there and back was in heavy rain and dense fog the whole time! And despite these poor "scattering" type conditions, the GPS still had a decent lock and performed better than I had hoped.
Also, the USB->serial compatibility layer driver that comes on one of the CDs will enabled older software to interface to the GPS even though they expect it to be on a serial port. I was able to get MapPoint to work with the GPS quite easily using this driver. Unfortunately, for MapPoint 2002 at least, a GPS seems like more of an afterthought for the product. It wasn't accurate at all in tracking and didn't have any of the neat features Street Atlas USA had. No speech, no voice recognition, no upcoming turns, etc. Basically MapPoint only shows you (roughly) where you are on the map and that's it.
In conclusion, I'm extremely impressed with DeLorme's Earthmate GPS and bundled software, Street Atlas USA 2004. I'm recommending it to all of my friends!
J
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