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Earthmate GPS Receiver and Street Atlas
Introduction
It was 1971 Vietnam, I was knee deep in rice patties and the enemy was closing in on my position. I had become separated from my Recon squad without a map or directions and running low on ammo. I could hear charlie coming closer and closer towards me so I had to act quickly. I whipped out my trusty laptop, hooked up my Earthmate Hyperformance GPS receiver and fired up Delorme StreetAtlas. In the time it would take you to empty a 20 round clip with full auto I had locked on to 4 satelites and plotted an escape route that took me back to the base. That was one of the most scariest moments in my life, but I have my Earthmate GPS unit to thank for saving my butt. It is only fitting that I pay tribute to the small device by writing up a review.
Ok, so I made that story up, but none the less GPS(Global Positioning System) is the coolest. I'll be taking a look at Delorme Street Atlas 7.0 and more specifically the addon feature of the Earthmate GPS Receiver. Steet Atlas is a nice piece of software that can plan your entire trip from start to finish including stop offs at points of interest, lodging and food needs along the way. It retails for $44.95USD and you can usually find it at most of the popular software stores. The Earthmate GPS Reciever can be bought as an addon to Street Atlas from the Delorme website and allows you to see in real-time your position on the map in Street Atlas. Now that is cool! Update: Delorme is now offering Street Atlas 8.0 which is compatible with previous Earthmate GPS units and contains 500,000 more streets, plus many other features and enhancements.
Street Atlas
Street Atlas by itself is a wonderful tool for planning trips and finding directions to most places in the USA. It not only will give you a list of specific streets to travel on in order to reach your destination but it also shows you the length of each leg, the total length of the trip, the time for each leg and the total time for the entire journey, plus much more. It bases these numbers on the maximum speed limit allowed by law so your times may vary depending on if you're a speed demon, a granny driver or the traffic is in gridlock. I've also noticed that Street Atlas doesn't always pick the best route for your trip but never fear there are some tweaks to remedy that. You can tell Street Atlas to use smaller local roads which may or may not cut your trip distance/time down. Of course changing the setting may take you on the back roads, but in most cases it should get you to your final destination. Street Atlas is not 100% accurate especially when it comes to back roads, but as new releases come out the accuracy will get better and better.
If along your route you see an area of interest like the World's Largest Ball of String attraction on the map, you can select that as a stop and the program will automagically change your itinerary to reflect your choices. Of course you have the ability to print out both your directions and the actual map of your route in case you don't have Street Atlas on a laptop. It marks your route with a band of highly visible color so there is no mistake as to which direction you should go. If you zoom in on the map you see icons representing areas of interest, lodging or food, complete with the phone number of the establishment. Not all places are shown, but the local Taco Bell and 1 hour Motel was on the map by my house! To get the most out of Street Atlas it would be a good idea to put it on a laptop, that way you can take it with you where ever you go.
 
GPS Lovin'
Speaking of laptops, I'd have to say if you plan on buying the GPS unit you should really have a laptop. I mean who cares if the GPS was attached to your PC, it's not like you're going to lug your PC around with an extension cord just to use the GPS. One time I was on the way home from work and had the laptop and GPS unit up when I happened onto an accident. The police were routing traffic around through the back roads and wouldn't you know it I got lost...big time. I simply looked at the map, saw where I was using the GPS, and obviously was able to make it home. This particular GPS unit I have has also been to and from both Texas and Hawaii. The people who used it said that watching your progress on the laptop was very cool since the arrow/dot, which represents the GPS unit, moved across the map without heed of obstacles or roads. The unit and software also displays altitude, speed and direction of travel, very cool indeed.
 
As you can see from the pictures, the GPS unit is about the size of a Palm Pilot and has a cord which connects it to the PC/laptop serial port. It can be powered by batteries, the keyboard port or a cigarette lighter adapter. There is also a connector for the USB port which connects the GPS unit and provides power. The various connectors are sold separately, purchased in a kit or purchased together with the software. I highly recommend getting one that will best suit your needs since carrying batteries around really sucks. Although, the unit can run for a 10 hours of continuous use on batteries, its still nice not to have to worry about that. If you'd like more information on the adapters Delorme's website has all the information you need. There is also a cable that will connect the GPS unit to your hand held device like the Palm III. I guess I should mention you'll have to flip out some cash for the program that runs on the palm device but you probably already figured that out. Also, the GPS unit must be connected to a device like a laptop or handheld because it has no display of it's own.
 
The not so good
The accuracy and funtionality of the GPS Unit is pretty good, but not perfect. With about 10 satelites to lock onto you should be able to get a "3D" fix for the most accurate readings, but I've found that even something as thin as a car roof can lead to lost connections with the birds in the sky. Therefore, I recommend placing the GPS unit as far forward on your car dashboard as possible so there is little interference. I definitely could not get a solid fix while the unit was within my home and had to place it right up to a window or even hang it out the window. Even locked in with 4 satelites, I noticed that the dot was about 30 feet off from the true position. Delorme's PR department states that the Earthmate GPS is +/- 20 meters or 60ft. This could also of been a mismatch with the map that Street Atlas uses but while traveling to dinner I saw the arrow drift now and again off the road. To accomodate these descrepencies, there is a setting within the software where you can adjust the offset of the GPS unit for a truer representation of it's posistion. It wasn't far, like I said 30 feet at the most, so it's no big deal for this particular application. I sure wouldn't want to use it to call down artillery when the distance from me to the bomb point is 100 feet or less but then again this particular software and unit were not designed with that purpose in mind.
  
Fini
Overall I'm giving the Street Atlas, GPS unit combo 8 tail wags out of 10. With a retail price of $179.95USD you receive Street Atlas 8.0, the Earthmate GPS Reciever, the keyboard adpater and cigarette lighter adapter. This is one of the better package deals available, and the versatility of the GPS unit to function with other Delorme titles adds some bang for your buck. I liked the ease of use for both Street Atlas and the GPS unit. While it was not 100% accurate, it was more than close enough. As an another bonus, Delorme offers other types of mapping software which are fully compatible with the GPS unit, like a topographical map program that includes lakes, streams and hiking paths. On the downside the Earthmate GPS receiver will only function with Delorme's software, very disappointing! Some of you may be asking yourself, "Why would I want to lug a laptop through the woods just to have GPS capability?". You're quite right, but I think Delorme's intent was to give GPS capability to laptop owners and NOT produce a handheld GPS device. Had Delorme added a display to the Earthmate unit and gave it stand alone functionality the cost of the device would have skyrocketed. Besides, you have the option to connect the Earthmate to a palm device. So, if you're looking for a trip planner with a GPS unit for your laptop then Delorme just might have the answer for you.
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Copyright © by LWD All Rights Reserved. Published on: 2004-02-20 (14898 reads) [ Go Back ] |
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