Underwhelming but workable solution.
Written: Jul 29 '02 (Updated Oct 25 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Compact maps, Canada streets.
Cons: Limited features, slow, awkward user interface.
The Bottom Line: Carefully consider all of your options before settling on Teletype. If it weren't my only option at the time, I would not have picked it.
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| mjgroff's Full Review: TeleType GPS Software |
I live in Canada and use a Delorme Tripmate GPS receiver so Teletype was my ONLY option for a Pocket PC mapping tool when I bought it in March 2002. None of the other options had both Canadian street maps and support for the semi-proprietary format of the Tripmate. So, I reluctantly paid the high price for the software with the Canada Streets add-on. If you do have other options consider them carefully. Teletype will probably end up far down your list.
Teletype usually does what it is supposed to. I can load maps of various spots in North America, search for addresses, plan routes, track my position and get audio driving directions. But, not without much frustration.
Map Data
Maps are included for all of N.A. from coast to coast to coast. However they are not totally up-to-date. I estimate based on the streets missing in my area that some of the data is two to three years behind, maybe more in other areas. The street addresses are often wrong or missing. For example on my street, there is no 15 or 21. In Teletype there is but 17, which does exist, can't be found. I have found numerous errors in highway on/off ramps. Teletype has ramps missing or connecting to the wrong place. I live in one of two cities that are very close together. In Teletype, the second city doesn't exist. You have to search on the first to find addresses in the second. The point of interest information does not exist for Canada. I can't comment on how decent it is in the US. POI's have to be downloaded and installed seperately for each map region. The knowledge of which roads are major and minor is also lacking. When calculating routes, they are rarely the most direct. For overall quality of the mapping data, my point of reference is Microsoft Map Point 2002. Map Point has P.O.I. for Canada and understands significance of roads much better. It is no more up-to-date than Teletype, Its address accuracy isn't perfect but it seems to be missing far fewer addresses. When it comes to map management, Teletype does poorly. My entire province is one large 8 meg map while some parts of the US are split into dozens of files a few dozen kilobytes in size. Having to load such a large area is bad on a resource limited Pocket PC. When the maps are too small, it makes it tedious because you have to individually load each one of them as needed.
Address Look-Up
As mentioned above, the address data is far from perfect. Assuming the address you want to find exists, it is very slow to look it up. On a Pocket PC, it may run out of memory and freeze/hang, if it does work, it may take several minutes. You may think this is understandable given the platform. Even when running on a PC, Teletype is painfully slow compared to MS MapPoint. The difference can be 20 seconds for Teletype compared with 1 second for MapPoint with MapPoint searching all of N.A. and Teletype just searching the current map (Ontario). On my Casio e125 with 32 meg ram, I have avoided freezing and made the lookup feature usable by installing almost all applications on a CF card to maximize available RAM. Ironically, Teletype must be installed in main memory - according to their FAQ.
Routing
Routing, perhaps one of the most handy features of mapping software is what Teletype does worst. It is simply unusable. To start, it is very slow. It only successfully completes on my Pocket PC when the start and end are very close, within the same city. On my PC it is slow but does complete. And I think you can transfer routes from PC to PDA. But, you may not want to. Most often the routes are unusable. They will have you taking small secondary roads because Teletype often doesn't know the difference between a two lane highway and a 6 lane expressway. Even this issue could be worked around if you could adjust the routes. That is not possible. You can't add a point to the route and have it re-route to include it. A route can only have two points - a start and end. I once played with it long enough that I had a sequence of routes that ran into each other. It was a lot of work. I never tried navigating along the route to see if it was smart enough to switch from one to the other. I simply don't use routing. I plot my own course and use the software as a guide. In this respect MapPoint excels. It calculated a route in 3 seconds that took Teletype 5 minutes. Its routes are easily adjustable and full of information like time, distance, tolls, speed limits, etc. MapPoint will even let you drag and drop routes to customize them.
Waypoints
You can add points to the map. Either you find an address and turn it into a waypoint, or you click and hold on the map to create one. However, you can't click an address on the map and then turn it into a waypoint. Instead you have to search for it with the find address feature. Otherwise this feature works fine. You can save waypoints to files of your choice and move them between devices like from PC to PDA.
Tracking
The only feature that works as expected without complaint. Teletype communicates with my Tripmate just fine. It locks into a position quickly and keeps the map updated, scrolling as I drive off-screen. It displays your longitude and latitude, speed and altitude on a second screen.
User Interface
The developers took the adage "keep it simple" too far. Standard features of modern applications like scroll wheel/jog dial support, tool tips and right click context menus were left out. Screen updates are slow even on a 1.5 Gig Pentium IV. Fortunately they aren't that much worse on my Pocket PC so they don't interfere too much with usability.
Audio Driving Directions
With the limitations on routing, I haven't used this feature much. It worked but the voice clips included are of poor quality and difficult to understand. This is not a hardware issue - they are just bad sound clips.
Support
The first version of the software required patches to work with the Canada Street add-on. This had to be manually installed but it did work. I required another patch to get it to work on my Casio e125. The help from Teletype was very fast. It came on a Saturday. I have no complaints about the tech support team.
Summary
I have a lot of issues but I still find this program useful. For my purposes, 90% of the value of GPS mapping software is the availability of maps on demand and the visual indication of your location on those maps. Teletype does that adequately. Should another program become available with Canadian streets and Tripmate support, I would immediately consider switching to it. As mentioned above, I have Teletype because I have no other choice.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
mjgroff
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Member: Mike Groff
Location: Kitchener, Ontario
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 0 members
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