Garmin cf Que 1620 - Initial Experience
Robert Robinson
The software seems to be generally well designed, the displays are fairly
easy to use, and the software installs and runs without any major problems.
The PC card GPS receiver is sensitive, lightweight, attractively packaged
and appears to be reasonably durable.
Weaknesses
The major deficiency for us is that, contrary to specific assurances from
Garmin prior to purchase, the Que 1620 software does not have the iQue
3600's capability of routing from Contacts stored Lat/Long coordinates in
addition to that of street addresses.
The antenna cannot be detached from the receiver nor is there any connection
for an external antenna. This is a very serious deficiency for automotive
usage.
The Que software installed, but would not execute properly from CF/SD memory
as opposed to main memory. Map data can be stored in CF/SD.
Storage area other than main memory is essential for many applications. The
GPS receiver takes up one CF slot. Depending on one's PDA you may or may not
have another CF slot or a SD slot. The potential loss of non main memory
storage area can thus be a significant problem.
The installation procedure is workable, but is quite cumbersome.
The combined GPS/PDA is obviously not watertight and therefore is not a good
choice for marine or other outdoor applications.
Robbie
Robert Robinson
cumbersome implementation of linkage to the "Contacts" address book. The
approach used by most vendors is that Contacts appears along with the list
of other location search options. In Que 1620, it is necessary to exit from
the Que software, execute Contacts, and then press and hold on a name until
a pop-up provides an option to link back to the Que software. Needless to
say this is a very awkward procedure and one that is totally unnecessary
from a programming standpoint.
Robbie
Robert Robinson
Strengths
The software seems to be generally well designed, the displays are fairly
easy to use, and the software installs and runs without any major problems.
The PC card GPS receiver is sensitive, lightweight, attractively packaged
and appears to be reasonably durable. It is about the size of a matchbook.
The map display is clean, uncluttered and occupies most of the PDA screen,
an important design given the small display size of the typical PDA.
The street turn displays are excellent.
Many user customizations are available including the display of 0-3 lines of
user selected data.
The trip computer is a nice touch. It displays a variety of heading,
distance, speed, and time information.
MapSource 6.1 is an excellent program/data package.
Weaknesses
The installation procedure is workable, but is quite cumbersome.
The Que software installed, but would not execute properly from CF/SD memory
as opposed to main memory. Map data can be stored in CF/SD.
The GPS receiver takes up one CF slot. Depending on one's PDA you may or may
not have another CF slot or a SD slot. The potential loss of non main memory
storage area can thus be a significant problem. The 64 MB of memory included
with the Garmin CF card can only be used for Garmin map data. It would be
helpful if this memory was considerably larger in size.
The antenna cannot be detached from the receiver nor is there any connection
for an external antenna. This is a very serious deficiency for automotive
usage.
The GPS receiver is not WAAS-enabled.
Windows Mobile 2003 SE, the latest Windows PDA operating system, has a
provision for easily changing the display from Portrait to Landscape
orientations. The Que 1620 software behaves properly with the display
orientation changes, but it is not possible to properly orient the patch
antenna with a PDA that is sitting on its long axis. Landscape display is
thus unusable because of the mechanical limitations of the antenna.
The major deficiency for us is that, contrary to specific assurances from
Garmin prior to purchase, the Que 1620 software does not have the iQue
3600's capability of routing from Contacts stored Lat/Long coordinates in
addition to that of street addresses.
Garmin has a bizarre and extremely cumbersome implementation of linkage to
Map scrolling is interrupted by touching the map. A virtual button must be
touched to resume scrolling. Most GPS software has an option to
automatically resume scrolling a short time after a map is manually
re-positioned.
The combined GPS/PDA is obviously not watertight and therefore is not a good
choice for marine or other outdoor applications.
It would be nice for Garmin to supply a tiny carrying case for the GPS since
the mounted size of the unit plus a PDA precludes usage of the typical PDA
case.
Overall
It is an impressive GPS navigation package.
It would be A+ if it had a detachable antenna, WAAS capability, and a decent
interface to the Contacts address book database.