I’m told that the apparent resurgence in PDAs is down to the increased (perceived?) need for GPS navigation. In fact you will struggle to find a high street outlet that has plain simple PDAs by Palm and HP in stock, whilst many shops do have a GPS navigation section selling all sorts of stuff by TomTom and HP and so on.
In spite of my female persuasion, I have never felt the need for a GPS system, in car or otherwise. What is wrong with asking for directions? However, curiosity has just got the better of me. Aided by a £10 off voucher from Expansys.com I decided to try one of their GPS units, A Navman B10. Basically for £9.95 + £2.10pp I have got a 2.5″x1.75″ GPS box that connects by bluetooth, a usb cable and car usb charger. There aren’t any instructions included, but the box does give an address for an online manual (!!!)
Luckily, I do have a small but perfectly logical brain, so it was just a matter of putting the battery in (incidently, the battery is identical to the Nokia BL-5C from my 3650 and 2310) and switching on. I paired it with my Sony Ericsson K800i (yes another new toy, more of which, later – possibly), using the code 0000 – good guess.
Now for software on the phone. I had searched around a bit whilst waiting for the Navman to be delivered, and the majority of opinion seemed to favour Nav4all on the K800i. Downloading this java prog was easy from nav4all.com on the phone’s browser, but I think an unlimited data plan might be best as it had to download a few updates, like voices and stuff. After pairing the GPS and firing up Nav4all, I was away. I found my location and then went for a walk around the block. Fascinating stuff, if you haven’t done it before. The system seems to be quite accurate, though it does tell you to allow up to 5 metres leeway.
Trying to get the unit to work with my HTC Touch though, was a different matter altogether, as windows needs to find com ports and the like. Aggravating.
I can see me making good use of the Navman B10 and K800i over the school holidays as we have some trips around the UK coming up. Should be good fun!
BTW if you are wondering about the title of this post? When I fired up Google Maps on my K800i (thinking I might be able to use it with the Navman) It kept showing my location as somewhere on Karlstadt, Dusseldorf. Although I have visited that area in the past, this morning I was positive that I was sitting at home in Milton Keynes!
Box contents – no manual, but no hardship.
