CoPilot 2002 Review... initial impressions

Phat Justice · 06-20-2002, 02:24 PM

YES... I just BOUGHT with a lot of my own money what is touted to be one of the best GPS nav progs for the USofA...

Now with Teletype GPS not being able to on the laptop (strange... win2000 won't start it) and Likuuva's Metroguide being a @#$% trying to cross between maps, and Microsoft's S&T not having a driver-friendly interface, here is the truest bugger... installed on my strange IBM Transnote

Now, the voice recognition interface is pretty awesome. You can't tell it your destination, but you can at least get some pretty useful (and some not so useful) functions using the mic... however the microphone is so sensitive that when I turn the page on the instruction manual (or crinkle paper), it thinks I said "pan right!" Good thing there is the "Go to sleep" command.

The huge arrow and huge-font instructions is a real awesome sight for sore eyes. Its extremely welcome. Turning off the map when you exceed 10mph is sometimes annoying if you're driving around lots of red lights. Unfortunately the voice instructions is only annoying when it says "go SOUTH on so-and-so street" which happens half the time... the other half is the better "TURN RIGHT on so-and-so street" readout.

Data is kinda... :-( My first (and so far ONLY) drive had really bad coordinates and street directions. First off, I'm going to the mall which is basically going south on a highway for 10 minutes and turn right and the mall is on the right (west of the highway). For some reason, Travroute thought that the mall was EAST of the highway... and not only was that bad, it expected me to make a LEFT TURN in the middle of the highway! Knowing better than to run my Taurus right into the divider, I went off course and took the correct directions to the mall. This caused CoPilot to go nuts. I think I saw it start to cry.

Anyway, I gotta make more runs with this program once my DC-DC laptop power supply comes in.

peace!
-Phat

jshrieve · 06-24-2002, 07:46 PM

When CoPilot tells you to take a left on the ramp, they mean take the exit and make a left turn, not drive through the divider. =)

I've not had many problems with the data in CoPilot 2001. It's been good to me. The best thing is CoPilot doesn't care if you don't follow its instructions. It just keeps giving you new ones.

magnetik · 06-24-2002, 07:54 PM

I wish some company would do Aussie maps for Co-Pilot soonish!!