REPOST-- IR Brian T LT-20 Delorme GPS

Here are my corrections.

They can be viewed in the test folder.
http://www.backpackgeartest.org/reviews/test/TESTS/Brian%20T%20LT-20%20IR/

or below

Thanks,
Brian

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Initial Report DeLorme Earthmate GPS LT-20
By Brian Tannehill

Personal Information    Background Information  Product Information
        Field Locations         Initial Thoughts        Questions Concerns      
Test Plan

Personal Information:

Age: 30
Gender: Male
Height: 5' 7" (1.7 m)
Weight: 175 lbs (79 kg)
Name: Brian Tannehill
Date: 10 Sep 05
Email: tannehillclan(at)gmail(dot)com
Location: Lompoc, California, USA

Backpacking Background:

I am fairly new to backpacking, but I have hunted/fished/camped all my
life in East Texas, Colorado, and California. My young kids (4, 10,
12) limit me to weekend overnight camping trips, or day hikes
Geocaching. I am also an avid mountain biker. For now I live in the
Central Coast area of California (Lompoc, Santa Maria area), and am
surrounded by many different areas from beaches to mountain regions
ranging up to 5,000 feet (1,500 m), with the temperatures averaging
about 60 F (16 C) degrees year round.

Product Information:

Manufacturer: Delorme
Year of Manufacture: 2005
URL: http://www.delorme.com
Software: Delorme Street Atlas USA 2005
MSRP: $99.00 US
Weight: 2 5/8 oz (76 g)
Length of Cable: 5 feet (1.5 m)
Size of Unit: 2 5/8 in (6.6 cm) long x 1 7/8 in (4.8 cm) wide x 9/16
in (1.5 cm) thick

Minimum System Requirements:

The system requirements for the Earthmate GPS is a USB port on my laptop.
The system requirements for Street Atlas 2005 are:
Microsoft(r) Windows(r) 2000 (Service Pack 3 and higher): 64 MB RAM (256
MB recommended)
Microsoft Windows XP: 128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended)
Intel(r) Pentium 300 MHz or higher processor (600 MHZ recommended)
700 MB of available hard-disk space
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or later
32x CD Drive
Microsoft Windows 98/ME is not supported with this release

My System:

I am using a Dell Inspiron Model 5100 laptop with a Pentium 4, 2.4
GHz, and 256MB of Ram running Windows XP Home.

Field Locations:

The locations of my tests will range from the Los Padres National
Forest just east of here ranging up to 5000 feet (1500 m) in elevation
to the locally famous Pismo Beach. Other areas I will be driving
include Santa Maria, Lompoc and monthly trips down to Agoura Hills
just north of Los Angeles. Basically anywhere I drive on the central
coast of California.

My initial thoughts and description:

The packaged unit comes with the Earthmate LT-20 GPS and the Delorme
Street Atlas USA 2005. Delorme was nice enough to send a copy of Topo
Usa 5.0 along with since the GPS will run on that software as well. I
will not be reviewing the topo program since I have already done that
here.

Ah installation time. I have just recently formatted my laptop so
installation took about 15 mins for both CD's. When I first run the
program, it prompts me to re-organize the button tabs across the
bottom of the screen. Having never used the software I found it odd
they would want me to re-organize them with out knowing how best to re
order or what order would work best for me.

This program looks just like the Topo 5.0 program. It is laid out the
same way and functions basically the same way. I couldn't possibly
cover every detail about this software program in this report so I
will focus on the ones I like.

I am also the proud owner of one of the earlier versions called the
Tripmate. Not only is it bigger, it is powered by 4 AA batteries. The
newer Earthmate is powered by the USB port on the laptop. One of my
concerns with the Eartmate being powered by the laptop is that of
power consumption. My laptop is about two years old so the battery
doesn't last between maybe hour and a half to two hours depending on
what its doing. Will the new Earthmate drain my battery faster?

New v Old

Here is a list of basically what you can do on this Topo software:

Find
Print
Draw
GPS
Route
Info
3-D
Netlink
Voice
Map Display
Handheld Export

Here are how the tabs are organized across the bottom of the screen.

home
(c) 2004 DeLorme (www.delorme.com) Street Atlas 2005(r)

The features I like the most so far are the GPS, Route, and Voice.

GPS:

As I noted in my Topo Usa 5.0 report the software showed my house in
the same position as noted on the picture. The green dot on the map is
me sitting in my driveway with the Eartmate locked up on satellites
right before we left. The yellow box is the find feature showing where
it thinks my house is.

The GPS portion is just cool. I'm not sure why but I played with the
software/GPS the first night for around 3 hours and could not get more
than 3 satellites to lock on. I used my Magellan Meridian GPS to see
what satellites I should be viewing or locking on to. I had no
problems getting my Magellan locked up. I even drove around my
neighborhood with 3 satellites locked and still got nothing to show up
on the software.

I tried it again the next night after work and in about 15 minutes it
locked up on some satellites. One of the reasons I think it took so
long on initial set up is it had to download an updated almanac which
takes around 12 minutes on a good day. The almanac is not stored in
the unit so it has to guess daily on where it last saw satellites. I
know there was some severe space weather going on at the time. Had I
not been testing this unit, I would have taken it back after using it
for three hours and not getting anything.

Day 3 of use and I figured out I had to reformat my laptop. So with
this in mind, I reformatted correctly, reinstalled the software and
went for a test drive. Within about 3-4 minutes I had a great
satellite lock. I then proceeded to drive around where I live and down
to the beach. Everything works great. The only thing I can say is due
to the combination of the laptop not being formatted right, the severe
space weather and Mr Murphy being along for the ride is why nothing
worked the first day.

I'll explain the rest of the GPS stuff in my Field Report, it is just
too much for here.

Route:

The route function is way cool. Especially with the turn by turn in
Microsoft Mary's computer voice. I'm really surprised because on the
Delorme website they have some examples of the voices and they sound
horrible. They really were not that bad on my laptop. I used the route
function coming back from the beach today about 5 miles away from my
house. The route took me over a road that is closed so I am still
disappointed with that feature. It has done this two times so far. One
road I know has been closed for 5-6 years probably closer to 8 years.

One of the coolest features about the route feature is it re routed me
automatically when I got off course. This is very cool. I did however
get it confused a few times in making numerous turns.

The route function shows me and tells me the next upcoming turn, how
fast it is approaching and how far away it is. It says "next turn is
coming up in 28 seconds and is two tenths of a mile away". I'm not
exactly sure what it is using to determine how fast the turn is
approaching. Is it the programmed speeds for each road or is it the
actual speed from the GPS? One turn that was after a long straight
away was accurate within about 2 secs. Other turns were way off
though. One told me I was 19 Seconds away when I was really only about
5 secs. Also as I get closer to my house there are a series of really
quick left right left turns. Basically each turn is within a few
hundred feet of the next. The route function didn't really keep up
with me and at one point I was two turns ahead of it before it caught
up.

Another cool feature of the route tab is called Plan Trip. Here I can
estimate end of day breaks and fuel stops. It also gives me an
estimated fuel cost. In this time of gas prices running $2.97 US per
gallon that's handy to have. My wife likes to make a lot of trips down
to Wal-Mart which is about 10 miles (16 km) in the next town. So I
calculate the amount each trip cost one way. I think it is a very
useful tool for planning road trips.

Voice:

There is an extensive voice set up and recognition process involved
with this program. Not having used any voice recognition software
before I thought this was the coolest thing. Not only does the
computer talk to me, I can talk to it and tell it what to do for hands
off operation. I had to talk to the computer for about five minutes
for it to recognize all my inflections in my voice. Of course
sentences were provided to read so I wasn't just making stuff up.

Some of the things I can say to the computer are "what is the next
turn?", "show next turn", "center on next turn", "directions", "where
am I", "coordinates", "shush", "pan left", right, up and down, zoom in
and out and my personal favorite "are we there yet"? When asked that
it tells me how much time is left and how far away my destination is.

More Initial Thoughts
Some of the other features I have used some but I will discuss more in
the field report.

Find
I still have trouble finding locations. At one point I had found my
house and created a route. I then deleted the route and tried to make
another route but the software could not find my house. I know where
my house was but the software could not seem to find it on several
occasions.

Map Files
I do not get many options on this but one thing I can do is import
waypoints from the Delorme Topo software. After they are imported
though there is no way to not display them like on the topo program.

Draw
Once again Delorme allows me to draw my own roads and make
modifications to the map. They also allow me to route from user
defined areas as well. I've discussed that though in my topo reviews.

Map Display
I can display the map in imperial or metric units, but I can only use
Lat and long for coordinates.

Handheld Export
I can export my maps to a handheld device such as a palm pilot but I
must have software installed on the handheld that can read the maps.

Some of my questions and concerns:

I really don't have any major concerns now at this point. Satellites
are locking on very quickly after initialization, and the software is
pretty accurate.

Some other questions to answer through the rest of this test.

How will the USB Earthmate affect power usage?
Will the find function become easier to use?
Will the software show position with only three or four satellites locked?

Test Plan:

I will be testing this software all over the central coast of
California to the Los Padres National Forest both east and north of
me, and maybe even out to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I will use the
software to find points of interest in and around the local cities,
especially while Geocaching. I will also use it to find my way to
trailheads that I hike.

This software and GPS offers features and functions previously only
available in high end GPS units. I'm really excited to be testing this
product.

Thanks to BGT and Delorme for allowing me to participate in this test.

Brian


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