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| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| larryc |
Posted - 26 nov. 2009 : 18:58:47
Updated 20091204 : Review by rem below who first used CoPilot when it was at its v1 in 2001, impressed with the features and usability, but wishes they used a better map database.
Original Post : Anyone try Copilot Live 8? It's on sale this weekend, so I was thinking of picking it up first, but I'd like to hear from someone with first hand experience. I found some reviews but they were from general "PCMag" type sources that don't have a lot of GPS experience. |
| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| larryc |
Posted - 21 juil. 2010 : 20:20:28
ALK finally responded that the settings are what they are; in other words the settings are not speed dependent.
Honestly, their answer doesn't make sense, at least compared to all the other gps software I've ever used.
As I wrote earlier, I haven't had a chance to test this on my own (it's somewhat hard to test when you think about it - you have to change one setting, then drive a route, then stop, make a change, and drive the route again, etc).
Additionally, I am having problem related to this setting that I can't seem to solve right now. When I go into this specific "speak turn warning" screen, all the options are unchecked. If I check some or all of them and then save, when I go back to the setting screen, the options are all unchecked. In other words, there's no way for me to make the settings stick.
I opened a ticked about this as well; they first suggested deleting my user.cfg file; that didn't work. They now are telling me to uninstall & reinstall the software. Haven't gotten to that yet but will post my results.
[edit] Just went through an uninstall / reinstall and it didn't fix the problem.
FWIW, that process was a real PITA with many time consuming steps. Uninstall the app and the maps... Download and & reinstall the app... Re-enter the license key... Download the maps to the device... Now enter the upgrade license key to enable TTS... Now download the quarterly update....
The entire uninstall / reinstall process probably took 30-45 minutes. I wish Copilot central 2.0 could store your license keys, so if you have to reinstall, you can simply push them to the device.
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| gpspassion |
Posted - 21 juil. 2010 : 09:56:38
quote:
Originally posted by larryc
Anyone play with the "speak turn warning" setting?
It appears to give options for 2 mi, 1 mi, 3/10 mi, and 'at turn'; however, the specific way it works is undocumented. I opened a ticket about this with ALK (since their online manual did not match what I saw in the program) and I was told the documentation is obsolete.
Specifically, I want to know if any of the alerts are dependent on your speed. For example, while on the highway I'd like to be alerted at 2 mi and 1 mi, but this doesn't make sense when driving on a local road at 25 mph. Sure, I could run a bunch of tests by changing the settings and then going out driving, but that is not so easy to do real-time if you are the driver and the tester! :) Hoping to learn if anyone else knows about this setting.
Don't think this can be made speed dependent but will check on my iPad version, keep us posted on their reply. |
| jeffcarp94 |
Posted - 21 juil. 2010 : 05:25:22
I just completed a 4071 mile road trip over the last 20 days which took me through 15 states. I used ALK's CoPilot Live the entire time. I've posted a rather lengthy summary of my experience on my blog here: http://tinyurl.com/2arsn9f |
| larryc |
Posted - 20 juil. 2010 : 22:11:30
Anyone play with the "speak turn warning" setting?
It appears to give options for 2 mi, 1 mi, 3/10 mi, and 'at turn'; however, the specific way it works is undocumented. I opened a ticket about this with ALK (since their online manual did not match what I saw in the program) and I was told the documentation is obsolete.
Specifically, I want to know if any of the alerts are dependent on your speed. For example, while on the highway I'd like to be alerted at 2 mi and 1 mi, but this doesn't make sense when driving on a local road at 25 mph. Sure, I could run a bunch of tests by changing the settings and then going out driving, but that is not so easy to do real-time if you are the driver and the tester! :) Hoping to learn if anyone else knows about this setting. |
| jeffcarp94 |
Posted - 02 avr. 2010 : 13:56:31
Larryc: Judging whether something is worth it is a personal decision, but there are some serious issues with the traffic service. The data is great. It comes from Inrix and I find it to be very accurate. ALK's implementation of that data, in my opinion, borders on worthless. While in a route, a traffic alert will be announced. Along the right side of the screen, a nice distance scale will open and individual icons representing traffic incidents will be shown along the distance scale based on how far the incident is away from you. So far so good.
Where it falls down is that as a driver, you have no idea what you are dealing with, unless you believe it is safe to push those little icons and then read the text associated with them while driving. That is the only way to determine the issue. Worse yet, the text from Inrix give you the traffic flow speed associated with the incident (i.e., congestion: 12 mph) but ALK doesn't do anything with that data. They do NOT adjust your ETA. Your ETA stays the same as it was before the incident ever occurred.
You can select individual incidents and manually detour, but you have no data to know whether that is the right thing to do or not. First, you don't know the delay amount you are dealing with. Second, you have no idea what the traffic conditions are on the route you would detour on to. When you select a detour, ALK shows you the distance change and time change (i.e., +3 miles / + 7 minutes) but that does NOT take traffic conditions into account. So your 3 mile detour could have a 20 minute freeway delay on it that their software IS reporting, but it doesn't tell you that until after you've accepted the detour and gone that way. Then - surprise! Another traffic incident shows up.
ALK also doesn't use the traffic data to calculate the route or to determine en route if a better route is available. Basically, traffic in this product is a reporting system. When you are already in the traffic physically, you already know about it. You don't need a reporting system, you need the system to tell you what to DO about it.
ALK has received a barrage of complaints about this on their Facebook website. To date, they've not said a word about it in response except a few private emails saying "please stop talking about traffic" and telling us how "hard" software development is and how things take time. Blah, blah, blah. This week, they appear to have filtered many of the complaint posts off their Facebook page and blocked new user posts.
The gas price feature works fine. Though it is missing some stations like a Flying J Truck stop and a few convenience stores that have been around for at least 15 years. And in California, while I've been there on business, I never go it to report any prices for any stations. |
| rem |
Posted - 02 avr. 2010 : 07:17:29
There are a few TTS voices that can be downloaded, they have the astrisk. I used a female Brittish voice. I do like the Live services, they don't cost much and it's interesting to see the accidents pop up along the way. I'm glad it doesn't re-route because most often the reported "accident/warning" usually doesn't turn out to be much of an event. I use a company car so I don't shop gas prices so I'm no help there. |
| larryc |
Posted - 28 mars 2010 : 04:21:26
I think it's worth mentioning that when I purchased Copilot back in November, TTS was "coming soon", but was going to be a premium add-on. Now that it's out, they did make it free, which is a nice perk!
That being said, I just installed it and I'm not sure it's quite right. I only see one TTS voice (Frank).
It sounds like the live traffic services are not worth it if they won't re-route you around traffic.
Has anyone tried the gas price search?
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| rem |
Posted - 09 mars 2010 : 03:30:22
Update, the update that added TTS also had a new US map and the file was significantly larger 1.6Gb vs 1.02Gb and it seems more up to date in my area in Southern California.
I really like the TTS and do think it's one of the best PPC implementations. It only has a couple of TTS voices, I prefer the female (less robotic sounding), it's Brittish English. The only annoying quirk is that it calls transition ramps "Slip Roads??" "Take slip road to...." rather than "Take off-ramp to...) and it says this a lot so it's becoming more annoying.
Also, the this new updated (TTS) prog is a bit less stable. More than once the app opens with no map displayed, or "no GPS detected", or leaves the "calculating route bar" at the bottom of the screen, or opens with the old route still set. To clear I have to exit the prog, soft reset, and then try again which usually works.
I preferred the previous version's stability, it always opened clean and ready for a new route. |
| jeffcarp94 |
Posted - 05 mars 2010 : 14:09:32
They are releasing monthly map updates with v8. The maps with v8 are much more current than before. |
| shepard |
Posted - 05 mars 2010 : 01:58:03
quote:
NO NEED TO QUOTE A MESSAGE DIRECTLY ABOVE YOURS, MAKES THE FORUMS EASIER TO READ, THANKS ;-) GPSPASSION TEAM
 I purchased a Rightway GPS400 and it had copilot live 7.0 on it with alk maps. The maps are actually at least 7 years old for the United States. I had my house built 6 years ago and our church was built 7 years ago in different cities and neither are on their maps. Our sub-division isnt even on their maps. |
| rem |
Posted - 25 févr. 2010 : 04:55:23
Thanks Jeff, I had seen the exact issue with the map naming and two map copies last time and I too reported it to tech support. This time the app appeared to download but was not recognized by the PC app until I deleted the old file and I had forgotten to check the map naming again. I could have possibly been able to save my favorites after all, but they are long gone now. BTW, Tech support told me that favorites are not saved between versions but they may not know about this naming issue, still.
I actually had to call ALK because the TTS was not there. They almost would not speak with me as their policy is free voice support for 60 days, after that only web support is available. They sent me instructions to delete CPL from the phone, then download the new TTS version from a link in the email, then copy it onto the SD card and over write the existing files and re-install the app. Then buy and activate TTS.
I then had to go to the ALK site and buy (zero $) the TTS application. It requires your CoPilot8 key of which mine was not accepted. I had to get the phone app up and running, then de-activate CPL, then re-activate on-line. Once that was done, the TTS app in the store accepted my product key (it was the same number).
So it's done finally and I tried a test run. I chose a female Brittish voice (from all of the many included voices there are only a couple of TTS voices, denoted with an astrisk). I'd say that the voice is better and more fluid than iGuidance so I'm pretty happy now.
So all of the automated updates and downloaders for CPL look good, but in this pass they were very rough leading to pretty much a manual re-install of everything. Hopefully next round will be smoother.
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| jeffcarp94 |
Posted - 25 févr. 2010 : 01:39:51
Technically, the map update didn't remove your favorites. What did happen is a bonehead move by ALK and it is the second time since the product was released that they've done it. The issue is, that they keep changing the name of the maps between "NorthAmerica" and "North America." Your favorites are stored within the map's folder structure. When they change the name like that, the map update isn't an update anymore. It is a second map install. You have both on your card now. Your favorites are still there, but in the old folder structure. They aren't copied to the new folder structure. You may actually still be using your old maps in the program depending on which map is selected in your settings. I personally notified ALK the first time they did this and they said they'd pass it on. Now they made the same mistake again. You can manually copy your personal files/folders to the new map folder structure and it will work fine. |
| rem |
Posted - 24 févr. 2010 : 06:25:37
Great info jeff, I still use CPL all the time despite it's limitations, I have been periodically checking for updates and just checked today to see the new updates. Downloading everything now, had to uninstall the PC app as there is a bug that prevents auto updating of the app. Once that was done the Phone app installed and the map is downloading now. Most PDA GPS TTS is robotic and resource hoggish, iNav does a hibrid that uses "canned" speech for everything except the actual street name. This keeps things snappier but sounds odd to hear two different voices. Hopefully ALK did a decent job, they certainly took their time.
Very sad to hear that they can't handle any critical comments in public. This reminds me of iNav who pulled out of this forum rather than communicate openly with the community. I dumped them when they went the software locked to memory card and never looked back. ALK has a very well written app that does have a ton of potential, let's hope they keep at it!
Edit, the S/W seems to have downloaded, I see a new Prog Icon but can't see anything that indicates TTS is present??
I downloaded the current map 1.6Gb Feb 5 and it shows the download progress for about 20 min, then extracts and seems to load to the SD, but the file size is still 1.02 Gb, the same size as before so I don't know if the map is really downloading. I've just deleted the map from the phone and PC and am re-downloading to see what happens then.
All in all, the auto checking and updates have been a bit frustrating cause they just aren't behaving as expected.
Frak, after I deleted the NA Map from the PC and Phone, it downloaded the new map with the new 1.63Gb size.....and blew away all my favorites, just great. Still can't see anything on the TTS, WTF? maybe it just works?? There is a greyed out speech key in settings but it's non-functional. |
| jeffcarp94 |
Posted - 06 févr. 2010 : 17:58:35
Last night, ALK released TTS in the US for Windows Mobile. They ended up providing it for free, which was a nice surprise. In a few tests today, it seems to work pretty well. The voices are a little more robotic than their non-TTS voices, but for free, I can't complain about that.
They also released a new map update. I find improvements in the map in my area, some of which are things that I submitted. Don't know if it is a direct result of them responding to submissions, or if it is just part of the evolutionary map update process. Either way, I am pleased with that update as well.
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| jeffcarp94 |
Posted - 05 févr. 2010 : 19:11:02
TimW - just to be totally clear.....Customers have not paid for TTS yet. It is an add-on that would be paid for when released. The problem is, when CPL was released in August 2009, ALK advertised TTS as "coming soon." Later that fall, they changed it to "Q4 2009." That remained on their website into late January when TTS was completely removed from their website all together. Though we haven't paid for it, customers do make purchasing decisions based on what ALK represents is coming (if they choose to do so, which they did). This goes beyond "requesting customer service." The complaints on their Facebook page were fairly rampant (before they scrubbed the posts) demanding ALK make a public statement about where TTS is at, why it is delayed and why it was removed from the website. ALK's own staff, on 4 different occasions posted to Facebook that TTS was coming "imminently" in one case. Then on a Sunday, they said it passed testing on Friday and would be released Monday. That was about 3 weeks ago. |
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