There are two parts to the GPS (short for “Global Positioning System”) puzzle: a hardware “receiver,” plus software that takes the received positional information and displays it in a humanly useful manner, such as on a map. Deluo’s Bluetooth GPS is the hardware part, a small black blob with two LED’s on top, an on/off switch on the side, and a rubber-door-covered charging port on one end. Thoughtfully, the little rubber door is tethered to the device so it won’t seek cover in your carpet as soon as you open the box.
As GPS’s go, Deluo boasts this week’s technology, according to the company’s technical specs (detailed later in this review). It’s not limited to working with the included software. It will supply GPS information from the satellites to a variety of programs that run on Palm OS or Windows Treos (and Centro), or laptop computers, or whatever else. Naturally there are gotchas in this equation, which I’ll blab about shortly.
Deluo’s GPS hooks up over Bluetooth to whatever you’re going to use it with, computer or Treo. The only wire is a power supply to recharge its Lithium-ion battery for an eight-or-so-hour shift of doing its thing. The charge takes three house, but it works while charging, and the package includes a car plug as well as a house plug. My review unit has only a US house current plug.
The device comes with Live Search for Windows Mobile, a recently updated offering from Microsoft that nicely interfaces with the GPS signals it gathers from Deluo’s device via Bluetooth, and generates maps and turn-by-turn directions. Live Search’s claim to fame is its large database of points of interest – “waypoints” or “POI” in the GPS dialect of TechnoSpeak. These include a mind-bogglingly huge collection of spots for sightseeing, travel destinations, restaurants, shopping haunts, movie houses, hotels, and the like.
On my Treo 700w, the software works like a dream, with many accommodations of the small screen and the mobile computing environment. For example, once you’ve searched for a point of interest, a café for example, the software displays not just the street address, but the phone number. You can simply tap the number to call for reservations or to find out if the place is open. When a map or an aerial view is being shown, a simple tap-hold-drag on the Treo stylus scrolls the display. Fast, too. This is way sweet.
You don’t need the GPS unit to use Live Search software. It works with or without the unit turned on. However, the device supplies on-going GPS positional information so the search results you get can be relative to wherever you are, saving the trouble of entering the position.
Indeed, you don’t need a Windows-driven Treo, either, if you can provide non-Windows mapping software on the device, Palm OS for example, that you use.
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