Garmin cf Que 1620
The following is based on hands on experience with the Que 1620 running on a Toshiba e800, Windows Mobile 2003 SE OS.
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 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.
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.
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