Cat Killer (and Sony Streetmate) - LONG

["Phil Harris" <phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>]

OK - it was me ... it was me that just plastered someones beloved moggy
across the road. I hate running things over ... no matter whether it's a
mouse or what. The bigger they are though the more damage they cause and
this was a big black cat that decided to run across the road in front of
me.
All I can say is that both the nearside front and rear wheels went over it
and it hit the front valance hard enough to pop the foglight out before it
went down. Damn ... I was finding it hard enough to get to sleep tonight
without the guilt of killing someones pet.

Anyway ... t ok the Sony StreetMate out for a test just now. The battery on
the VAIO has held out long enough for me t  plan (and drive) a route from
my
house t  my in-laws (4 miles away), back to mine, over to a friends house
in
Basingstoke (16 miles away) and back again.

Results are positive on the whole and the main negatives are generally
those
of GPS as a whole but I was happy to find that it handled the strange
layout
of roads coming out of Basingstoke just fine. Working out that I couldn't
actually keep on the A30 as I left to go towards Winchester but had to go
out t  the M3 roundabout and double back on myself to get back ont  the A30
itself.

It does suffer from lack of sky ... some of the A30 is heavily overhung
with
trees t  the extent that they pretty much meet in the middle. It really
didn't like this and lost track of where we were big time however so did
the
Garmin etrex that I had with me t o. In its defence, as soon as we popped
out from under the trees it updated itself quickly enough. However I think
that had there been solid tree cover for a distance before a turning it
would have missed the instruction t  turn.

The turn instructions can be a bit late ... on the way back along the A30 I
was t ld "2 miles, Turn right into Lovedon Lane". Now maybe I'm
expecting
too much and I will admit that I did see the road name of the sign but the
final "Turn right" instruction t  alert me t  the turn actually
came about
20 yards after the turning. Following the "turn right"
instruction by
turning right at the next junction (which I knew t  be wrong) didn't raise
any prompts from the software.

Knowing that I had turned down the wrong route I did tell the software to
take me from where I was back home and it did so - unfortunately the path
it
t ok me also t ok me the bumpy route over "Smudge" or
"Shadow" or whatever
it was called. (Now known as "Road Pizza" :-< )

Right ... other limitations/notes.

The male voice is almost unrecogniseable - stick with the female. Its
pronunciation of road names is - well - primary school in level but
recognisable. For the announcements don't even consider your PC speakers -
run a line out t  your existing hifi. I temporarily tapped mine into the
front amp for my in-car system and it was fine - I'd probably buy a really
cheap and crappy car amp just for this if I was using it full time.

If you're used to the UI for Autoroute then you'll cringe at StreetMate
however once you start using it it's simplistic layout is actually quite
good on the road. The remote works like a dream and the ability t  have the
map pointing in the direction you're going is superb.

Overall first impressions are good ... the routing isn't quite as detailed
as Autoroute 2001 - for example it gets me t  the road that my in-laws live
on whereas Autoroute tells me how far up the road they live but it seems to
be foolproof in that it doesn't get messed up by the awkward roads coming
out of Basingstoke.

Looking forward t  playing with the thing more (but hope t  avoid cute and
furry things on the way).

Phil




____________________________________
Automated Home UK
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
____________________________________

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject t  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/