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The external antenna (I know she's dirty, no flames):
Here's the actual GPS reciever. It is a Bluetooth unit, so it doesn't need to be attached to the Pocket PC. I hide mine in the car with the external antenna attached. That way it is out of site and out of mind. It runs on a rechargeable 8 hour battery, and has a power adapter so you can hard wire it if you want. This makes for one less connection that you have to perform when you get in the car. Since it is rechargable and wireless, you can throw it in your pocket or backback if you were going out on foot, say on a trip to New York or something. I placed it on the money for size reference.
I paid about $189 shipped for the GPS reciever on Ebay brand new. An external antenna will cost maybe $10-$20 or you can buy it bundled. For thos who want to use this reciever with a laptop and dont have a bluetooth enabled laptop already, you can get whats called a Bluetooth USB "dongle". It is just a very small antenna that plugs into the USB port and will enable the laptop to comunicate with the reciever and any other BLuetooth devices. This "dongle" is less than $30 on Ebay.
This picture here is another option. It comes with a Compactflash antenna which simply plugs into the CF port on your PocketPC. The card thing on the right is the PCMCIA adapter that you can plug the antenna into and then plug the pair into your laptop PCMCIA slot. The whole bundle in the picture shown here is on Ebay now and will probaly sell for $120 or less. The only drawback to this style is that it sticks way out on the PocketPC, obstructing view a small bit, is something else to connect/disconnect when needed. But, it is cheaper.:
the software I use is called IGuidance. According to the websites I have checked, it is one of the best availiable right now. The system uses maps produced by Navtech, which is the same company that makes maps for OEM indash systems. It can do everything that indash systems do and probaly more. The scrolling is very smooth and acurate. The voice is a very pleasant female voice. It also tells you your speed very acuratly and can be used to verify speedometers. One function I like is the ETA (estimated time of arrival). It uses both your currwent speed and knows what the most likely speed is for the roads ahead and tells you within a few minutes both how long you have left to drive and what time it will be when you get there.
Having it placed on the vent is nice because you dont have to take your eyes off the road too much and since the virtual buttons on the screen for inputing addresses etc are big enough that you can operate them with a hand on the wheel.
Glen, does your Ipaq run PocketPC 2002/2003 or is it an old Windows CE device?
If its the CE, then the Nav software wont be compatible with it.
However, I got curious and installed the software on my old laptop using the PCMCIA slot and the Bluetooth CF card. I was amazed at how well it works. The bonus is that the map is HUGE!!!! You can see alot of ground on a large laptop screen. You can always go the laptop way if your PDA is not compliant.
As far as the antenna for your PDA, you can get either the CF antenna itself, or a CF bluetooth antenna which is what I have. Very few PDA have internal Bluetooth antennas so far and those that are, are big $$$.
Yes, for me. I like the fact that I can hide the BT reciever anywhere and not have a ton of wires pluged into my PDA for it to work. The only wire I have coming from my PDA when in use is the power cable.
Ok so new thread to talk about GPS and all that!
if we whore up his clean car wash thread.
. But it still works!
Sometimes!