DeLorme Earthmate Car GPS Receiver

While searching for the best price on my new notebook computer, I happened onto the Delorme GPS Earthmate. The price of $99 dollars seemed too good to be true. I have gambled with a lot more so I ordered it, along with my computer, from PC Mall.

The new toys arrived at my office and I think that I was more excited about the GPS than the notebook itself. After going through the usual new computer setup, I tore into the GPS box and started loading software. Despite reading the negatives about the software, everything loaded fine and ran the first time started. My employees thought I was so weird when I headed outside the office with my new notebook in tow.

The unit immediately locked onto the satellites and gave a 3D position in under a minute. Everything was going so smooth and all was right with the world .then it happened. The GPS stopped working.
No lights, no activity, no position. I tried unplugging the USB and reinstalling the software. Installed the GPS test program. All programs were reporting no GPS. My little techno world was shattered. I called Delorme tech support and spoke with a personable, knowledgeable person, who agreed with my diagnostic work and proclaimed that the GPS unit had plain and simply failed. He took my address and said he would send me another and a call tag to send the defective unit back. Customer service, the way it is supposed to be.

While waiting for the new GPS, I took time to learn about the program. I will concur that it is not the most intuitive program but the capabilities are incredible. My wife and I are planning a trip to southern New Mexico next month. We spent a lot of time over the weekend setting up the routes and looking at the details of the program. The database while not perfect even had the small four-bedroom lodge that we are staying at in Ruidoso. I was amazed. You can even find radio stations for a given area. I am sure I have not even touched all of the features but so far it has been easy to set up routes, maps and even mark points of interest. The interface could be much better. I am not sure how easy it will be to deal with on the road. I have already found out that I like using a mouse or trackball with the program better than the touchpad on the notebook (of course I am still getting use to the touchpad in general.

The new Earthmate arrived yesterday. Once again, my staff laughed as I headed out side to test the new hardware. Eureka, it works! I couldn t wait to drive home to test the software and GPS. I put in the begining and end points for my trip home and went for shortest route. When calculated, the route took all of the same back streets that I normally take. I was impressed with the directions given for even the the unnamed roads. The program did try to take me on a private road that cut across a farm. Without local knowledge that might have been a problem. When I calculated the route for fastest, the program took major roads directly to our home. In general the software tracked actual streets fairly well although there were some errors on secondary roads in agricultural areas.

The accuracy and precision of the WAAS enabled GPS is quite good. The lat/lon readings are within a couple hundredths of a minute as compared to my marine GPS chartplotter (See my Epinions.com review on the GPSmap 182 ). How this is portrayed on the mapping interface depends on the accuracy of the map data. In the case of my home address, the GPS position in my driveway shows that I am about 300 ft south of my street. I am sure that as the map data is refined, by using GPS enabled surveys, the positioning on streets and roads will be much better. Until that time it is close enough to get you to where you want to go. By the way, you can load the map data files to your hard drive so you don t have to have the CD-ROM disk in while using the program. Maps redraw much faster this way.

All in all, this is a great device. For the money I am not sure if you could find more capabilities. After the initial unit failure, I hope that the hardware is up to the abuse that Road Warriors can dish out. I will post a follow up as to how the unit and software functioned on our great circle route in New Mexico.

Addendum: We have returned from our driving trip through southern New Mexico ( and NO for the umpteenth time....you do not need a passport to visit there....it is a US state!!!!) The Earthmate performed flawlessly during the entire trip. It was so much fun to see your progress on the map and to know what altitude we were at while driving through the mountains. The accuracy of the maps was very good, even having many forest roads that usually arent on maps. There was very good correlation between the computer maps and the DeLorme topo map book that we brought along.

I was happy that our rental car had a bench seat with a fold down armrest. We placed the notebook PC on the seat between us then folded the armrest down to hold the computer in place. It never fell once and could be seen easily from both the driver and passenger seats. It probably would have been difficult if we would have had a console to deal with. When we use the unit in my 300XZ, my wife has to hold the unit on her lap. Not the best thing for long trips. I guess the version that works with a PDA would be easier to deal with size wise, but would be harder to see in general.

We really didnt use the unit to guide us. We just used it as a way to show where we were at the moment.

By the way...I was able to get a satellite fix while on the flight out. I just held the sensor up to the window and the unit got a 3D fix in about 30 seconds. I was able to read both speed and altitude (470 mph and 32,000 ft) I wasnt sure how legal it was to run the GPS so I only did it to see if it would work and put it all away. I checked the Delta web site and there is no specific regulation against using GPS, although it could be considered a radio reciever. I wasn't going to ask.

Bottom line. The Earthmate was fun to have on the trip but for vacations I worry about being too "plugged in" and hooked on technology. Sometime we just need to pull the plug and relax without dragging a pile of equipment with you on the road. I think if you were a true "road warrior" the unit would be a great help in getting you to your next big sales appointment or driving your 18 wheeler with it's valuable load. As we all know...sometimes high tech equipment is just fun to have. See you on the road.