OnCourse
Navigator v5
August
25, 2005
Review by: Adam Z Lein, Senior
Editor
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INTRODUCTION
OnCourse Navigator 5 is the result of a
collaboration between EasyPocketNav and Navigon to
offer a Navigon software based GPS solution for
North America.
Earlier this year we reviewed
OnCourse Navigator 4, which faired quite well
and had the potential to be a great product dispite
a couple small issues (such as the slowness of
launching the application.) OnCourse Navigator 5
aims to address those issues, but have a number of
previous features strayed off course?
SETUP
(the following
two images link to higher resolution)
The setup for OnCourse
Navigator 5 has been very simplified. Just insert
the first DVD and you get a nicely designed setup
screen.
After putting in the first DVD and
selecting your language, you can choose from the
above menu items. Choose “Install OnCourse Navigator
5” first to install the application to your Pocket
PC connected via ActiveSync. The application will
take up a huge 13Mb of storage space, by the way.
When you click “Transmit Maps” you
get to the above screen. This allows you to select
which map you would like to use with OcN5. The
reason they’re called CleverMaps is because they can
be activated and purchased individually. What’s not
clever is that this is your only choice for using
the maps.
You have two methods of map
transfer to choose from.
After clicking “Transmit map”, you
can choose where to put it. Using the ActiveSync
method gave me an error on my 512Mb SD card, but the
card reader method worked fine. Once the transfer is
finished, you go back to the Transmit Map screen
which gives no indication of what you need to do
next.
And that’s all there is on the desktop side!
That’s right, no more Skin Editor or Map Export
programs. You can’t create a custom map that follows
a certain route. You can’t create a map that has a
certain radius of data. You can’t create rectangular
selections of map data. You can’t navigate
cross-country with a map that’s 7Mb in size anymore.
Nope, all of that is gone. So in my case, the map I
use is of the Northeast, which takes up 217Mb.
Normally, I would only need a 50 mile radius for
most of my New York area navigation needs, which
would take up about 40Mb. But now I have to delete
170Mb worth of music in order to use OnCourse
Navigator 5. Now on to the Pocket PC setup…
Startup time has been greatly reduced.
After the friendly legal notice window, you get to
the above registration screen.
Then you get a device-ID specific to your Pocket PC
and you’re asked to go online to activate the
device. If you’re actually on the road recovering
from a hard reset this will be a big pain as there’s
no way to copy the device-ID nor is there any way
to access Pocket Internet Explorer from here. Let’s try
anyway…
When visiting the website I was told to, I don’t
see anything about registering the software or
entering my device-ID number. All there is is a login form
and a “My Data” new account form. I guess I’ll make
a new account. And guess what… The “Send” button
doesn’t work. Nothing happens. So forget about
activating OnCourse Navigator 5 from your Pocket PC.
Registration does work from a Windows XP Internet
Explorer system. The registration requests a “Serial
Code”, this is the number labeled “License Num” on a
little piece of paper in your software’s DVD case.
I don’t know why they couldn’t make the labels
consistent.
Once you fill out the registration form on your
desktop you’ll get an “Activation code” which you
have to enter back on your Pocket PC. As if this
wasn’t already a pain, you have to use the OcN5
proprietary keyboard.
Yay! Finally!
Next you get to this screen. I would recommend
using the “Show Intro” button first as this will explain
how to use OnCourse Navigator. This is important
since the user interface is changed from the previous version and
is no longer as intuitive.
For example, Tapping and Holding on the map has an
entirely different function than just tapping on
the map.
Automatic detection of the GPS receiver is a nice
touch.
And now you’re ready to go!
PROGRAM FEATURES
OnCourse Navigator 5’s default
interface is a simplified version that is supposed
to make it easier to use. You can switch to the
extended version through an item in the settings
window. In my opinion, these two different types of
interfaces make the program more difficult to use
since some functions can only be accessed from the
extended version, while other functions are easier
to access from the simplified version.
When you press the Navigate button, you get to
the above screen. You have to select a region
in the <please select> area
before you can enter an address. But I just want
to select a contact from my address book. That function is missing from
this screen.
But if I go back to “Settings” and change
the “User
mode” to “Extended”…
Now we’ve got more options! (Although the
“Nearby GPS Position” Point of Interest button is
gone.)
If I choose Contacts, OcN just opens my Contacts
program. There’s still no indication of what
I’m supposed to do here. Turns out, you have to tap and hold on the
person you want to navigate to, and then choose the “OnCourse Navigator” item
in that context sensitive menu. Then you’ll be presented with a list
of the contact’s addresses from which you can choose
from.
The address is entered into OcN when you tap Ok.
Strangely, the address fields are still formatted
incorrectly. The street number should be first, then
the street, then the City and Zip. I don’t know why
it didn’t recognize the street number, but as you’ll
see in subsequent screen shots, the navigation
calculation DOES remember the street number.
Tapping “Start Navigation” will bring you
to a routing options dialog.
Pressing “Start Navigation” again will start
calculating the route. This could take a while so
plan on sitting in your car for a few minutes.
After the calculation is finished, you get to the
navigation screen. In the lower right you get
some information about ETA, how long the drive will
take, and the distance. On the left, you’ll see
information about your next turn. The “Info” icon at the
bottom activates the voice prompt to tell you the
next instruction based on your current location. The triangle icon with
an exclamation point is for TMC enabled GPS devices which would
get traffic information through radio signals. This
doesn’t work in North America, so forget about that
one. The icon with the satellite dish tells you if
you have GPS reception. The notepad icon starts the log book which is
good for keeping track of your mileage and trips. The Windows icon brings
the start-menu/title bar back to the top of the screen
so you can access other applications.
Pressing the orange button in the upper right shows
some familiar buttons that you’ll recognize from OcN
4. You might also notice, the back arrows to get
back to the main menus are gone from this user
interface. It took me a very long time to figure
out how to get back to the main windows in order to
change a destination or edit the settings.
It turns out that tapping on the map brings up this
window where you can quit the navigation and get
back to the main screens. You can also switch to
night mode, mute the audio, set intermediate
destinations, block a road that might be filled with
traffic, and access route options and settings.
By contrast, tapping and holding on a spot on the
map gives you an entirely different options window
related to that specific point on the map.
In Extended mode, the home screen also has a “Route
planning” button. The house icon automatically
navigates to your Home location which you can
specify in the Settings dialogs. The icon of the
person with orange waves coming out of his head
activates the voice tag feature. When you save
locations, you can record a voice tag to associate
with it, then when you press the voice tag button
just speak the recorded voice tag again and it will navigate to that
location.
You can use the “Route Planning” window to
set up multiple destinations for your navigation. The plus
symbol with a flag next to it lets you add destinations.
The trash can deletes them.
The calculator button calculates the route. When
it’s done, the “Route planning” window will show the
distance and time required for the trip.
The floppy disk icon lets you save the route for
using later.
Tapping “Start Navigation” will direct you
to your next destination. Here you’ll see the navigation
view in 3D mode.
OcN shows a big green box with the name of the
street you’re supposed to take next. The exit
number is in the circle on the upper left. Sometimes it also shows the
speed limit in the upper left corner. You’ve also got plenty of icons
on the map that indicate points of interests. Arrows on the streets
indicate one-way streets.
When driving through park areas, the map colors are
more readable than the white-on-gray colors you’ll
see in more populated areas.
Tapping and holding on a POI to set as a destination
while navigating to another location is very
difficult as the map keeps moving.
OcN 5 also supports landscape mode as well as VGA
devices.
While traveling, OcN 5 has a very polite voice that
tells you where to go. The volume control is not
system wide, which means you can listen to MP3s at
the same time (Although with the larger maps, you
won’t have much room for MP3s on your storage card.)
OcN’s voice prompts often say “Please” when
directing you to make a turn. This can get old, and
it becomes an unnecessary additional word that
reduces the system’s communications efficiency. On
the other hand, OcN thought they could increase
voice communications efficiency by using phrases
like, “Take the exit right.” This just sounds
wrong. Another problem with the voice prompts is
that OcN 5 likes to tell you to “turn right now”
BEFORE you have to make the turn. It could be just
me, but the word “now” means now… not “in 20 feet
or so.” The prompt should indicate a distance or
number of turns with enough warning for the user to
safely make the turn.. and therefore should not use
the word “now”. Really, it should say
something like, “Take the next right.” But it
turns out some people don’t understand the meaning
of the word “next” either. Some people think “next”
means the one after the one coming up, despite all
dictionaries indicating otherwise. Read on, for the
exciting conclusing of my OnCourse Navigator 5
review…
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OnCourse
Navigator v5
August
25,
2005
Review by:
Adam Z
Lein,
Senior Editor
Jump
to: PAGE 1 |
PAGE 2
(sponsor)
HELP SUPPORT
OnCourse Navigator 5 comes
with a printed Quick Start guide and a PDF based
manual. Also, Easy PocketNav has created a nice
support section on their website that’s updated as
the need arises. You can contact Easy PocketNav by
email and your questions will be addressed promptly.
However, their website no longer offers as much
information as it did for OcN 4. I was unable to
find any video animations or audio files showing how
OcN 5 works.
OPTIONS
The supposedly nice
thing about this version of OnCourse Navigator 5 is
the Clever maps which can be activated separately.
This cuts down on cost for the developers since they
only have to produce one set of DVDs. Then depending
on what maps you want to use, you can purchase
licenses for those maps which will then let you
activate them for your device.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
OnCourse
Navigator 5 requires a Pocket PC running Pocket PC 2002, Windows Mobile
2003, or Windows Mobile 2003 SE. It does not support Windows Mobile 5.
If you’ve only got 64Mb RAM on your Pocket PC, you might want to close a
few programs before running Navigator 5. You’ll also need a NMEA
compatible GPS receiver and a memory card with at least 256Mb of space.
On the desktop side, you’ll need a Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP PC with a DVD
reader since the software comes on DVD.
BUGS AND WISHES
The biggest problem with OcN 5 is the map file
sizes. One of the major selling points of the older
OcN 4 was that it could create corridor map sets
from Navteq maps. This was something no other
product could do. And now that feature is gone.
We’re also missing the
capabilities to create any kind of custom map set
since OcN 4’s Map Export tool is no longer
supported. So like I said before, if you only need a
map for a small area around your house, you’re out
of luck.
OcN 5 still uses a forced full-screen mode where you
can’t access any of the other operating system
functions or software input panels. There is a
button to activate the OS input panel, but it only
activates whichever one you last used. There’s no
way to switch between system SIP’s. On the plus
side, the windows icon button that reveals the
Start/title menu seems to stick, where as on version
4 it would go away when changing menus.
Lastly, OcN 5 doesn’t work with Windows Mobile 5. It
will install, but there’ll be errors when trying to
use the program. Also, the user interface isn’t
remotely compatible with Windows Mobile 5’s soft
buttons.
PURCHASING
You can purchase OnCourse Navigator 5 directly from
OnCourseNavigator.com. The software comes in a
variety of different versions. The
M size gives you one regional map for $79. The
L version gives you all regional maps in the USA
and Canada for $139. The
XL version gives you all regional maps of the
USA & Canada plus larger regional maps and a
seamless map of the USA for $199.95. The
XXL Version comes with all that plus a seamless
map of the USA and Canada for $209.95.
European maps are available for $179. You can
also purchase the
software bundled with any number of other GPS
devices.
PROS
- Accurate
Navteq maps - Speed limit signs
- Much faster than previous
version - Voice tags
Independent volume control
CONS
- No custom
map creation capabilities whatsoever - Provided
map sets take up too much storage space - Doesn’t
specify side of street for destinations
| Value |  |
| Ease of Use | |
| Features |  |
Overall |  |
OVERALL IMPRESSION
I think we can describe the OnCourse
Navigator 5 upgrade a
s Vladimir Il’ich Lenin
once said, “one step forward, two steps back.” The
speed is greatly increased, the maps and navigation
retain excellent accuracy, the very loud volume
problem is gone… but we don’t have the extensive
custom map set creation capabilities that OcN 4 was
so highly praised for. This makes me wonder, what
direction is this program going in? Maybe the next
version will get back on course.
Originally published on Pocketnow on August 25, 2005.