CoPilot Live 7 GPS

[mindfrost82]

I was just on www.alk.com looking up information about CoPilot for the Q. They're coming out with a new version, CoPilot Live 7, and according to the site, it is a single version that will work with PPCs and Smartphones.

Shipping is 11/07/07 and it sells for $199.

Does anyone plan on buying/upgrading this version? I'm very interested to read some reviews about it. I loved iGuidance v4 for my Treo 700wx and I hope this is comparable to that.

I emailed their customer service and they said we would be able to copy the maps off of their supplied card onto our own miniSD cards.

Too bad they don't offer a demo of this program.

If anyone buys it, please post a review here.

[rudeboy]

---moved---

[mindfrost82]

Originally Posted by rudeboy

---moved---

Sorry, I posted this under Software since it was about the GPS app and not the hardware.

Anyway, I emailed them again asking about text-to-speech to announce street names and they said it won't be included in the initial release but they plan on releasing a patch within a few months that will add that feature.

This program sounds promising, I went ahead and bought it. I will post my review on here once I have time to mess with it.

[mindfrost82]

Here's my quick review after 1 use.

- Installation was easy. I copied the files from the supplied miniSD card onto my 4gb card. It installed without a problem. I installed the desktop program from the DVD, also without a problem.

- Activation was easy. On the phone I had to enter the supplied product key and it used my Sprint EVDO connection to activate it. I also setup a Live account through the desktop version for any updates.

- The program froze on me twice so far, requiring me to pull out the battery. Once was while I was in the settings and once while I was trying to setup my BT GPS adapter. It worked fine after I pulled the battery.

- Setting up my BT GPS adapter was easy (except for the 1 time it froze).

- The menus are nice and are a combination of iGuidance and TomTom. The are easy to figure out. The selected items are highlighted with a yellow border, which can be hard to see, especially if the phone is mounted in the car. To tell what I have highlighted I have to move to the next menu to see where the yellow border moves to. They could have used a different color or highlighted the entire button instead of just using a border.

- The maps look about the same as iGuidance and TomTom. You see the roads, road names, POI's, etc., just like usual. You have a choice what the information bar at the bottom shows, which is nice instead of cramming all the information in there.

- The maps in my area aren't as complete as iGuidance v4 (on the Treo 700wx) was. CoPilot doesn't have my subdivision or the one my in-laws live in, which is a bit of a disappointment since iGuidance had them, and that was released close to 6 months ago. The main roads appear to be accurate.

- I haven't tested it, but they have a feature as a part of the Live desktop software that will allow you to send an invitation to someone so they can view where you are. You can set your phone up to send your location every x minutes. So for example, if I'm driving to my parents house, I can send them an invitation and they can login and view where we're at.

If I had to choose, I would still pick iGuidance v4 over anything else just because it has the most recent maps in my area. But since its not available for the Q (or any smartphone), I think CoPilot Live 7 is really good. I tried Route66 for smartphones and I like CoPilot 7 a lot better.