Copilot

Map management is excellent in my opinion
1. Maps created either by area/radius/route corridor
2. Highly compressed maps: 50mb for California + Nevada, 570mb for the whole US
3. Very good US highway map that uses only 27mb of space
Trip planning in planning mode
1. Fast calculation
2. Good routes. Routes are not always the best but it does have this TERRIFIC waypoint feature that most other programs lack, (only Teletype and PocketMap Navigator have it). The "Flag" trick actually lets you look at the road chosen and if you want to alter it slightly, just tap a point and you're done. This is very useful. The only caveat is that in Guidance mode, you'll be guided to each waypoint, not to the final destination via the waypoints, so not real ETA but Estimated Time at Next Waypoint. Probably an easy fix.
3. Possible to insert waypoints, via the "Flag Tip", this is a GREAT feature compared to the competition.
Trip planning in guidance mode
1. Possible to avoid segments of a route, however the program sometimes refuses to calculate a new route so it might be of limited use
2. Possible to create a detour, this seems to work each time unlike a) not terribly intuitive though as I haven't yet figured out how to accept or refuse a detour for sure- -anyone ?
Navigation mode
1. Clear indications with big arrows although you do lose a lot of map area. You can get a larger map view by hitting the top part and hitting the second icon (driving wheel).
2. Toggle between Passenger (with map) and Driver (no map but more navigation info) modes. This is not very well implemented as there is no manual override, i.e. you have to be above a certain speed for the driver panel to show up and then goes away when you near a turn or slow down. Not a bad idea but you should be able to control what it does.
3. Displays ETA or TOA. If you're more than 4 hours away, will show ETA if not TOA. Not configurable.
4. Fast rerouting
5. The buttons are large enough so that you can tap them with your finger
Map Appearance
1. Offers "snap to road" - this can sometimes be a negative see "current limitations" of Navigation software.
2. Although map appearance has been pretty criticized I kind of like the 3D display of sorts
POI's
1. Unlike for some competing products, you can actually search for POIs
Voice Guidance
1. offers choice of recorded wav's or synthesized (text to speech)
2. TTT is either man or female

Map data and management:
1. Map data is collected by TravRoute and while they've done a competent job, they probably don't have the resources of NavTech. As a result some map data has been reported as being old and inaccurate. My testing in the SF bay Area has not shown any such problems though.
2. As pointed out by m_romeo, "the maps are proprietary and the accuracy is variable, with an update cycle of a year (I live in a small town that is off by about .3 mi )"
3. Not really a con but you need to be careful not to cut off areas you'll need later on if you use the "corridor" method. Sure it will save tons of space, but got to be careful not to be too memory thrifty !
Trip planning in planning mode
1. No scrolling with the stylus or with the joypad. You have to use the rather imprecise scroll bars. That takes a way a lot of the fun ;-)
2. Selecting a point on the map is a bit difficult if you don't know about the "flag tip", see below
3. no intersection lookups
Trip planning in guidance mode
1. Don't know if it's a bug, but while you can still have stops in the directions, it will only route you to the first stop, so the navigation screens won't show you the distance or ETA to the end of your trip but only to your next stop. Slightly defeats the purpose of having stops.
2. While a pro as a concept , the "avoid" feature doesn't seem to work very well, i.e. the program sometimes just ignores your request !
Navigation mode
1. Doesn't offer ETA and TOA at the same time, unlike Mapopolis for instance. Also it will toggle ETA/TOA with the next intersection. There's enough room for the intersection to be displayed somewhere else. Also the program shouldn't decide when to display ETA or TOA. I think that should be left to the user.
2. Can zoom in, but can 't zoom out manually without hitting the top part of the screen and then using the icons.
3. Toggle between Passenger (with map) and Driver (no map but more navigation info) modes. This is not very well implemented as there is no manual override, i.e. you have to be above a certain speed for the driver panel to show up and then goes away when you near a turn or slow down. Not a bad idea but you should be able to control what it does.
Map Appearance
1. Street names don't appear, you have to tap the screen which can be dangerous while driving.
2. Screen refreshing sometimes leaves artifacts (road names) when you zoom out, both on PocketPC and desktop
POI's
1. Not very comprehensive (no Post Office for instance...)
2. need a trick to have the Desktop POIs on your PPC, see "POI trick below"
Voice guidance
1. Unlike Destinator, I feel CoPilot doesn't warn you long enough in advance of a turn, Destinator has 2 miles/500 yards and 200 yards. Copilot seems to have mainly just ahead, which is a bit stressful!
2. Not very loud even on the normally VERY loud iPaq
3. Text to Speech is pretty hard to understand

Tips:

"Flag Tip" posted by WalterM in a PPC Passion thread
"1) Make sure you're in planning mode.
2) Click on the "Pick point from map button" (the red flag with an arrow pointing to it).
3) CoPilot brings you to a screen that wants you to localize the location where you want to pick. However, if the map is already where you want to pick from, just hit OK. Otherwise, this screen lets you get as local as you'd like before picking the point (State -> City -> Near an address).
4) When you get back to the map screen, touch and hold on the point you want to make a destination. If you touch and release, it zooms in further for you.
5) At the next screen, you can give it a name. Even if you don't want to enter a name, I suggest you put an "a" or something in there - CoPilot acts weird sometimes when it's destination doesn't have a name.
The "Pick a Point from the map" function is handy for intentionally routing myself around a road or other place"

Kevin2 rightly point out thought that this will only work for an spot with an address in the CoPilot database. So if the spot you pick doesn't have one, you'll have to pick the closest one with an address.

fastd has a workaround "Here is a fix. Once you have your "close enough" location stored, the favorites list is just a text file called "favorite.lst". Edit with a text editor, and add in your new lon/lat numbers. You can also edit the other fields if you want to change the name or something."

"POI Tip" also posted by WalterM
"This Tip is kind of a hack, and you need to have the map data on a rather large storage card, so take it at that: Users may have noticed that the number of POIs that are placed on the Pocket PC are much fewer than those on the desktop counterpart. I wanted the ALL of them on the Pocket PC (after all, that's where you're going to call on them), so I PUT them there. The way you do it is to go to (on my desktop) "C:\Program Files\TravRoute\PocketCP3.0\Places" and copy the contents of that folder. Then (on my PPC), go to "\Storage Card\pocket copilot\DATACD" and paste (it's quicker if you use a card reader to connect the card to your PC). This will replace the small POI database files with the big ones. It takes up a lot of space but you then have all the POIs that are on the desktop. That way you'll get some more of those gas stations and Waffle Houses you didn't see before.

"Intersection Tip" - posted by Jarredduq here
"You can put intersections into CoPilot, just enter them in as for example: 1st & Main."

Seems simple enough, but you had to think of it ! Just tap the "address book" icon and put the intersection with the ampersand (&) in the "address" field

"Zip Code Tip" - posted by Doug Raymond here
"It's neat that you can enter a zip code for a destination"

Again simple enough...Just tap the "address book" icon and put the ZIP code in the "City" field and it will select the relevant town. .It works with Zip codes for the whole country, so I suppose it's getting them from the "Highway Map" I chose to download.

Q&A - (excepts from various threads at PocketPC Passion)

"...Also, the female voice is easy to understand (on a 3970). It does sound computer generated though, but it is very nice to hear the name of the street you are supposed to turn down..." by fastd

Map Management

From this discussion thread at PocketPC Passion:
Q - Can someone with CoPilot please confirm that maps are loaded to the PPC after a route has been created, i.e. unlike programs like Destinator you don't load the ready made maps of California.
If it's the case it's got pros and cons obviously. While it lets you fit a long trip in little memory by specifying the radius of the start/Stop and corridor alongside the route, it could be problematic if you need to change your plans and don't have a laptop with you !
R - You can actually load data in three ways.
1. Load data for a specific trip (ie. Seattle to Minneapolis) - this allows you to select the amount of data for the starting city, stops, corridor, and ending city. For example, you can select a 10 mile radius of the starting city, 20 mile radius of any stops, 10 mile radius of the ending city, and 5 mile radius of the corridor. All of the radii are user specified and only limited by memory on your PPC, CF, or SD card.
2. Map Area. You can select the data for a specific area on the map (i.e.. the whole state of MN or even multiple states). Again, only limited by storage space.
3. A City Radius - select any city covered and specify the radius you want (i.e.. Minneapolis, MN - 30 mile radius).
Q - Thanks, this is helpful and really seems to be the best solution with a lot of flexibility.
For #2, do you select an area with the cursor on a laptop/pda or are they predefined, say the state of MN, CA, etc...
R - For number 2, you select the area with a cursor. You can also have multiple areas loaded on the card, say a trip from Seattle to Minneapolis, and also have the whole state of Iowa.
Q - So in theory it's possible to load the whole country ?! Probably need that 2gb Toshiba PCMCIA drive though !
(...)
By Fastd:
"The whole US will fit in just under 600mb (I didn't try generating the file, just looked at the file size estimator it provides).
The mapping data is a large database, and not individual files.
When you make an area to download, it just creates a virtual map into the database.
When you do actually select to download, you pick which of these "maps" you want, and it then creates a subset of data to send to your pda. So there is no map switching, either the area is there or not. So you can load the US Highway map so you can plot a course to anywhere. And then only include the detail areas you want. In the pda software, you do not have to switch maps, as there is no border!! (just a database of varying size) I really like this feature much better than Destinator's. "

When installing, you do have the option of loading the application also onto a memory card. I put in in ram though, I will have to check the file sizes, but it looks like it doesn't use much room"

Conclusion:

Pros:

Excellent Map and Memory Management - only cross-county door-to-door routing solution - Best

Routing is generally excellent and fast. Rerouting is also the fastest. Routes can be customized with waypoints - Best

Navigation information is fairly rich but not customizable

Pleasant Interface (large buttons, search assist, auto-zoom, etc...)

POI function is well implemented

Comes with a desktop application for sophisticated trip planning (can't download routes to PPC though)

Cons:

Map data is not as accurate and up to date as NavTech maps in some areas

Map display has a few quirks (screen refresh, no street names)

Auto-Settings can get in the way (driver/passenger screen, auto-zoom)

Overall evaluation (compare)

Short distance in town: C

Medium (<200 miles) distance: A-

Long (>200 miles) distance: A^-