Handheld Reviews

I bought this unit for GPS data collection. I choose it because of the 115mb internal memory and the 10,000 track points storage, WAAS capability, external antenna jack, USB port, and color screen.

The screen is very readable in full sunlight, better than any I have seen. The rocker switch makes text entry for track and waypoint descriptions easy.

However, once you have waypoints marked it is extremely difficult to delete them. This is because there is no function to bring up the waypoint list except the "Find" key. If you have waypoints far-away from you, you cannot delete them because you can only "find" waypoints near your current position.

Well, mine came with 2 waypoints outside of the United States, one was Garmin Europe, the other Garmin Taiwan. These points do not show up if I use the find function as they are too far away.

I see no way to delete these waypoints. Also, since there is no Waypoint management screen, you have to delete the waypoints you can find one at a time.

The MapSource program does not allow you to delete the waypoints, so how do you get rid of Garmin's headquarters?

This seems like a very ridiculous limitation for a NEW GPS unit in this price range.

The MapSource program allows for a DXF export, all I could get was 5 points and a single line. I had collected 7 tracks and 30 waypoints.

O.K., why is Garmin putting games on the GPS units? I would rather have the ability to manage waypoints than 5 stupid games.

Without WAAS I was getting +/- 18 feet (at least thats what the screen said). I was able to collect track and waypoints under canopy, but I did notice I lost track points while circling a large riparian area.

Track points can be set to collect once per second.

Summary:

I like the unit, but not being able to easily manage waypoints is a major limitation.

What would make it better?

1) Ability to Delete all waypoints
2) Waypoint Management Menu screen
3) Allow more than 20 tracks
4) Remove corny games, why would you be playing these games at sea? This is a MARINE unit...

Suggestion:

If you are looking for a GPS unit for Data Collection, this ain't it. Unit has the potential to be a great tool, but un-professional limitations restrict its use to a fancy toy.

I have just received my new GPS 76C. It is a great unit. There is however a major downside. If you intend to use this for marine navigation and are looking at buying a BlueChart CD to download Charts, you only get one unlock code with your CD. This means that you can only use one of the region charts. Ie. if you are in the Eastern part of the Med, you can use your one free download to get the chart for this area. If you move to the West of the Med, you now need to buy another unlock code. These are far from cheap and will start costing you a fortune. Buy a Magellan GPS as the Marine CD is cheaper and you get all the charts for the region you purchased included and not have to buy each areas chart. I am now stuck with a GPS that I don't really want.

I bought this unit for GPS data collection. I choose it because of the 115mb internal memory and the 10,000 track points storage, WAAS capability, external antenna jack, USB port, ability to load maps, and color screen.

The screen is very readable in full sunlight, better than any I have seen. The rocker switch makes text entry for track and waypoint descriptions easy.

Managing Waypoints is a bit cryptic. This is because there is no function to bring up the waypoint list except the "Find" key.

At first I did not realize I could search by name, there are many submenus whith additioanl functions. I think it would work better if there was simply a WayPoints menu (there is one for Tracks, and one for Routes, why leave waypoints out?) rather than having to "Find" your waypoints.

The MapSource program allows for a DXF export, all I could get was 5 points and a single line. I had collected 7 tracks and 30 waypoints.

O.K., why is Garmin putting games on the GPS units? I would rather have the ability to easily manage waypoints or more tracks than 5 stupid games.

Without WAAS I was getting +/- 21 feet (7 meters) on top of a levee, and +/- 49 feet under canopy, at least thats what the screen said. I was able to collect track and waypoints under different levels of canopy, but I did notice I lost track points while circling a large riparian area with 40-50 foot trees.

Track points can be set to collect once per second, or by distance. The smallest distance is .1 mile, it would be better if it could go down to meters. Track display is very good.

Summary:

I like the unit, but Waypoint Management could be easier.

What would make it better?

1) Waypoint Management Menu screen
2) Allow more than 20 tracks

3) Pulldown box descriptions for Waypoints, Tracks, with user item entrys, like "tree", "River", so I don't have to enter every letter every time.

4) Remove corny games, why would you be playing these games at sea? This is a MARINE unit...

I just picked up this leather case for [price] in the bargain bin at Future Shop (...) and I must say that it was a good deal. The feel of the case is nice (as its leather) and my Visor Prism clips in nice and tight. The only down side is that when it's closed the cover tends to rub up against the face of the Visor and I'm actually seeing some of the blue finish rubbing off and showing the black plastic underneath. Not good. After spending so much money on this unit you want to keep it in as good condition as you can. I would recommend getting another type of case that provides adequate protection with a clip in type mechanism that has a cover that doesn't rub up against the finish.

I like the fact that it has such a snug fit. It also makes your Prism 'appear' less bulky. My only complaint is the velcro strap...it should've been a snap clasp instead.

The case is fine, paying 24.99 seems like not a bad deal until
you get hit with the 16.99 shipping and handling, which almost
DOUBLES the price. Go buy this at Staples.

The seller has my money, was supposed to ship by 11/27, sent him an email and he said he would ship by 12/2. No merchandise was ever received! It is now 1/6/03 and I still have not received anything.

The serial cradle is just as fast as the USB cradle! Very nice!

The serial cradle works just as well as the USB (only a little slower). Windows NT does not use USB ports. This cradle allows synch actions between NT and my Visor Edge. The cradle looks and feels just like the USB cradle. One-push button is all it takes to keep Outlook 2000 and the Edge in perfect synch.

My Jornada 547 pooped out in less than a day. It took the replacement over a month to become brainless. What a piece of trash. And returning it? Forget it, HP and the store owner both wouldn't let me send it back for a refund the second time.

However, all the peripheral equipment worked well. Too bad I can't use it.

If you are on the road, you need this item. If you charge at the office everyday or at home, you don't! Works well and is a high quality product.

I work as a business consultant and I usually travel by car to a city near hometown. I takes me two and a half hour to get there, meanwhile I connect my Jornada 458 to a cassette adapter and into the stereo, plug the DC adapter into the car lighter outlet and enjoy listening to my favorites mp3 songs or audible books of my preference

Otherwise, I think I'll run out of batteries on my Jornada

Got the pack for my HP Jornada 548. It is basically a peel-and-stick film. Firstly, its size is less than Jornada's screen - about 1 to 1.5 mm on each side. Secondly, the film has some sticky residue that was left on the screen after I removed it. I like the idea of a sticker as opposed to original HP's "clip-ins," but it could be worked better. When returned to Amazon, I was warned I'd be charged return shipping costs because "item did not fit my equipment" was my fault (!??). Not a biggie, but description could be clearer to avoid similar experiences. Again, my experience applies to Jornada 520/540 series PDAs.

I've got an Axim X5 and noticed that the screen size on this thing was exactly the same. They're WAY cheaper than the Dell brand ones, and they've worked great! Get some before you scratch your screen :)

These Screen Protectors work just as advertised...Definetly a great buy at a great price!!!

It has some compatibility problems with the SanDisc MMC that came with the MiniJam. I formated the disc and then I couldn't use it again! I kept getting fatal errors, even with the patch! Also, the 64MB on the MMC is only for music downloads. You cannot move files from your PDA to the MMC with the program provided. You can only use the 2MB of flash on the MiniJam module for PDA storage, which goes down to 1MB with the preloaded software. The MMC are also expensive. Better off with a MiniDisc player with cheap minidiscs than expensive MMC that store only about 10-15 songs per 68MB MMC. Not a value!!!!

I chose this MP3 player over the Sounds Good because it offers the Peanut Press Reader. I also found it at a better price. My only recommendation for this MP3 is that they should look into making something similar to the SoundsGood energy clip so that you can use it as a stand-alone unit, and you don't need to take your Visor with you. I think it is great and I love the different 'skins' it offers! However, as far as I can tell, you can only use the provided memory for music, not the peanut press books.

I would like to start off this review by letting everyone know that I was on Amazon.com when I was lokking for an mp3 player, tons of them were [...] priced and they didn't have the options I wanted! I happened to look over to the right of my screen and saw a recently reviewed item, WOW it was an mp3 player, so I checked it out, even though the price was out of my range. I printed out the information to compare it with the other I had chosen, and read the review for the Minijam...a five star review...and the only one on the page. Well I was dissapointed with the price of the MP3 player, but not all of the wonderfull features. At the point I was reading the technical data, I had no idea you needed a Visor to use the MINIJAM, I found this out later after I bought the thing on [...], but that did not bring my hopes down, it was a great product and I even found a brand new visor on Ebay. So I get the visor and the minjam in the mail and hook them up together and put all of my Mp3's I can onto it, then plug in the headphones they come with, those headphones are not good headphones, but I had some nice [$] Sony ones that worked great. But the design of the Minijam is nice and goes perfect with the visor the picture viewer and Peanut reader are very nice as well. The ability to turn off the visor while listing to mp3's is great when in school, or riding a bike, or working. But even better I was riding my bike at about 15mph and the visor slipped out of it's case (because of my own dumb fault) I was on a gravel road and taking a sharp turn, well the player and visor hit the ground at I only had a couple scratches and the minijam was still playing to perfection. The different settings on the minijam are very nice as well along with going from song to song. But the player looks very cool and the best thing is no one knows what they are! The memory cards are nice and it only takes about 10 minutes to Hotsync the mp3's onto the minijams 32mb cards that are very compact. Additional memory is a key to mp3's and the extra 2mb that the minijam provides for the visor will kepp you out of trouble with memory problems. Handspring did a great thing teaming up with Innogear. This product is nice, I got mine for [$], and the visor afterwords for [$]. Buy one you will not be let down. The sound quality is great and the ability to put new skins on the player always will let you expand onto better things.

Pros:
Excellent accuracy. On-screen maps. Waterproof and floats. Rugged. Big buttons. SD cards (add a card reader and save hours).

Cons:
Big & heavy. Buttons too easy to press accidentally. Serial connection (serial?! why not USB?). Screen hard to read in shadows. Messy menu navigation.

On a like-for-like comparison to other mapping handheld GPS this gets 5-stars. On the basis of what it could have been had Magellan really thought it through, it gets 2-stars.

I'd say this (and others like it) are the last of the 2nd generation GPS. Good for their time, but rapidly being obsoleted by developments in other areas. Expect to see a switch to a variety of GPS/PDA/phone/bluetooth/radio combos with much better integration into the wireless PC world coming in the next product cycle.

This was my first GPS. I ended up returning it. Here is my experience:
Cons:
(1) Difficult to use for driving even though it received signals very well. When I bought it I thought it was voice prompted. Actuall it was audio prompted, meaning that it beeps when it thinks you should make a turn.
(2) Rerouting is not automatic. You have to press a button. That's not convenient.
(3) screen is small and black and white. Looks primitive. For $450, I thought it should be better than that.

Pros:

(1) Does have detailed street level info when you load the CD.

The Meridian (h/w)/Direct Route (s/w) combination is the best value going today. It does *not* provide voice directions, but can be set to an audible beep when a turn approaches if desired. It is not color, but color does not really add much to a GPS anyway (and consimes more battery power), it is the resolution that counts and the Meridian is more than adequate.

The nice thing about this GPS is that you can use it in your car for turn-by-turn navigation, while hiking in the woods to keep track of where you are and how to get back, as well as on your bicycle etc. There are better specialized GPS units available (for instance ones for use specifically in a vehicle), but they lack the flexibility of the Meridian to use where you want to use it.

Finally, the Meridian can hold a lot of street level detail through the use of SD cards, where most, if not all, of the competition can only use the built-in memory supplied with the unit. I think you will find this to be a huge advantage when you find out how much you can store on these cards, and how limiting the built-in memory is.

It doesn't have search option. You can spend a lot of time to find sth in it.
It is difficult to use keyboard. Try another product.

If you need something to write down ideas, lists, dates, phone numbers. This little guy will do just fine. User interface is a tad akward at first but ok once you get the hang of it.

at nine dollars this thing does many things plus does them affectionately vastly more durable + better than the 8121 or the glum 8131 Any organizer over $70 might do well to bundle the thing with I think many people will prefer this little organizer kind of like getting two glasses at the optometrist

It looks nice and does an okay job of protecting your Palm, but it's pretty bulky, and doesn't have enough pockets in the sleeve.

This series of Visor cases seems quite nice. The visor locks in place solidly, the leather is good looking, and the unit appears well made.

But two weeks after I got the case, the snap came apart. To Amazon's credit, they sent an immediate replacement. But the replacement's strap was just short enough to make the male and female snap pieces not meet easily.

I'm going to keep the case anyway and see what happens. But my experience points to some quality control issues at Handspring manufacturing.

--dave

this is a good safe case for my visor. I already have a wallet for cash and plastic but at least it looks good with my visor

This cover looks nice for the first week, then winds up getting dented EASILY!!!!

Buy if your VERY careful

It's a fairly basic product - the only reason you would but it is to spruce up your Pocket PC. I would just caution that the color is not really navy blue at all. It is more of a metallic dark purple.

The only thing I disliked about my HP Jornada 525 when I first bought it was that there was no place on the device to put the stylus, and there was no cover for the screen. This cover corrected all of that. Before I bought the cover, I read other reviews for it that said it didn't fit right on their Jornada 520, but I had no problems installing it. It works and looks great, and fits in my pocket easily. As the last person who reviewed this said, it is more of a dark, metallic purple, but it still looks good.