In this day and age, buying a standalone GPS device isn't the only way to get navigation help. If you have a cell phone or smart phone, you can add software or GPS accessories to turn your mobile into a handheld navigation device. One such solution is the Garmin Mobile 20. Unlike some of the other car kits we've seen, such as the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit, the Mobile 20 works with a number of Palm and Windows Mobile devices (Garmin also offers a separate accessory for BlackBerrys) and offers turn-by-turn text- and voice-guided directions and acts as a hands-free speaker system. The setup and hands-free integration isn't quite as sophisticated as the Palm accessory, but it delivers accurate directions as well as some nice extras, such as traffic alerts and weather updates. The Garmin Mobile 20 is available now, but it's on the pricey side at $299.99.
Design If there's one area where the Garmin Mobile 20 falters, it's in the design and setup. Unlike the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit, where all the pieces are neatly integrated into the cradle, the Garmin Mobile 20 requires a bit of assembly and doesn't boast quite the same streamlined design as the Palm kit. On the one hand, Garmin conveniently built the GPS receiver, speaker, and car charger into the cradle, but then you have to attach six different plastic pieces to the backboard of the cradle that act as the arms for holding your smart phone in place. It's not particularly hard; you just have to slide the posts along the left, right, and bottom edges. It just requires a bit more setup time, and it doesn't look as pretty as the Palm GPS Navigator Car Kit, but it's certainly not a deal-breaker. Plus, the Garmin Mobile 20 accommodates a number of Palm and Windows Mobile smart phones, whereas the Palm accessory only handles the Treo 680 and Treo 700p.
In the box, you get the mount with integrated car charger, a package of six standard posts, four extra posts to accommodate larger mobile devices, a vehicle mount (windshield and dashboard), an SD card preloaded with maps and software, and three adapter cables to charge your handset. There is also a volume dial on the right side of the cradle that you can depress to activate hands-free operation.
For our tests, we used the Garmin Mobile 20 with the Palm Treo 700p. The cradle easily accommodated the device, but we had to readjust the upper left post so it wouldn't hit the volume buttons. We also had to shift the bottom post to plug the power adapter cord into the connector on the bottom of the smart phone. The windshield suction mount securely held the cradle and smart phone during our test drives, and it features a lock mechanism to reinforce the seal between the suction cup and windshield.
Features Garmin makes things easy by preloading street-level maps of North America and nearly 6 million points of interest on the included SD card, so you just have to insert the card into your smart phone's expansion slot to get on your way. You'll find the application under Mobile XT on your smart phone, and if you're familiar with any Garmin products, you'll recognize the interface and features, as it's very similar to the company's standalone in-car GPS units. Even if you're a newbie, the software isn't particularly hard to navigate or master, as all menu options are clearly identified and self-explanatory. There is also a built-in help section if you run into problems.
You can start planning a trip in a number of ways, including entering a specific address, picking a point of interest (POI), selecting a recently entered location, or choosing a name from your phone's Contacts list. If you don't need guidance, you can just have the Garmin Mobile 20 track your movements by tapping View Map, or if you're completely lost, you can go to Tools > "Where am I?" to get your current location (nearest address and coordinates) and nearest major intersections. As with the automotive units, the Mobile 20 can generate directions by fastest time, shortest distance, or off road; in car, pedestrian, or bicycle mode, among others; and you can instruct it to avoid certain road types, such as toll roads and highways. The system also features route simulation, automatic route recalculation, a detour function, and traffic alerts via Garmin Online. Just be aware that the latter requires that you have a data plan for your phone to access the information.
The Garmin Mobile 20 offers turn-by-turn, text- and voice-guided directions, but it doesn't support text-to-speech functionality. This means the system won't speak actual street names; instead, it will give you more generic directions such as, "Turn right in 200 feet." Maps are available in 2D and 3D view with day and night colors, and you can change it so north is always at the top of your screen or the direction in which you are driving. While you're in map view, you also get your next maneuver presented at the top of the screen, and your speed and estimated time of arrival at the bottom. For a total overview of your journey, there's a Trip Computer that calculates your average speed, total miles and trip time, and more.
Some other cool mobile-specific functions of the Garmin Mobile 20 includes a feature called PeerPoints, which lets you send your current location to a contact via text message. It's great for letting people know if you're running late or if you want to meet up with friends at a certain location. If the recipient of the message happens to be a Garmin Mobile user as well, he or she can even save or route to that location from their device. We tried PeerPoints several times and had no problems sending messages, and our contacts always got the messages--pretty cool. Also, in addition to traffic alerts, you can use Garmin Online (remember, you'll need a data plan to access these services) to find the cheapest gas prices based on your location, hotel rates, weather information, and more.
Finally, you can use the Garmin Mobile 20 as a hands-free speaker system for phone calls. We were able to make and accept calls, but we wish there was better phone integration with the program. For now, to activate the hands-free functionality, you have to press the jog dial on the right side of the cradle. It's located far back on the accessory, so it's hard to access easily. You can get to your Contacts list through the Mobile XT application, but it requires a couple of taps. We were also able to bring up the Treo's dial pad by pressing the Talk key on the phone, but it took a few seconds for it to appear, so we thought it didn't register and tapped it again, causing the device to freak out a bit--oops. Needless to say, it'd be nice if there was a quick icon within the program that we could tap for this functionality.
Performance We tested the Garmin Mobile 20 with the Palm Treo 700p in the San Francisco Bay area. From a cold start, it took about three minutes for the system to acquire a satellite fix under cloudy skies. Though subsequent starts didn't take much longer than the initial acquisition time, it was a bit erratic, as sometimes it got a GPS fix right away, while it took several minutes at other times. The Mobile 20 did an accurate job of tracking our location as we drove around the city running errands, although it did drop the signal as we drove through a tunnel and through the skyscraper-filled financial district.
We also used the Garmin Mobile 20 for a trip from San Francisco to downtown San Jose. The program was able to calculate a route within a couple of minutes, but be aware that if you decide to download traffic information, this will add a bit more time to the overall process. The driving directions were accurate, and route recalculations were timely. Our one gripe is that voice prompts were a bit on the soft side, even when we jacked up the volume on the cradle and handset. That said, it got the most important job done, which was getting us to our destination.
The good: The Garmin Mobile 20 accommodates a number of Palm- and Windows Mobile-based smart phones and offers turn-by-turn directions and hands-free operation. You can also receive traffic alerts, weather updates and more, and send your location to contacts via text message.
The bad: The cradle design is somewhat kludgey, and we wish there was better hands-free integration. Speaker volume is on the low side, and the kit is a bit pricey.
The bottom line: Though the setup is a bit messy, the Garmin Mobile 20 is a nice alternative for smart phone owners who need navigation help but don't want to buy a standalone GPS device.
Design The iLoad looks like a bloated knockoff of a Mac mini. It measures 7 inches wide, 8 inches deep, and 3.5 inches tall, and features a slot-loading CD drive on the front, a 2-line monochrome LCD screen on the top, and an array of connection ports on the back. The user interface is on the top of the box, surrounding the dimly lit 0.5x2.5-inch screen. The controls are basic (part of the product's whole concept) and include tactile buttons for power and Go (enter), horizontal arrows for scrolling through the iLoad's menu, and vertical arrows that baffled us for quite some time (read the Performance section below).
Looking at the back of the iLoad is like pulling the curtain from the Wizard of Oz. With two USB ports, an Ethernet connection, VGA monitor output, peripheral connections, and audio ports, it looks like the back of a computer. Don't tell grandma, but the iLoad actually is a computer (albeit a very basic one). Of the 13 connections found on the back of the iLoad, only 5 of them are actually used by the device. For a product designed for technophobes, the inclusion of 8 useless and confusing computer connections runs counter to the iLoad's philosophy.
Features The iLoad can serve several functions. Its main purpose is to allow users to turn on the device, connect their iPod, insert a CD, press a few buttons, and rip the CD audio directly to their iPod. The iLoad will only rip music to an MP3 file format with a bit-rate quality that can be adjusted from 32kbps through 320kbps (default is 128kbps). The iLoad can also transfer files from one iPod to another (although DRM-protected content will be crippled), and can back up or restore your iPod using an external hard drive or flash drive. While these last two features are useful, they also point to one of the weaknesses of the iLoad system--ripping music directly to your iPod leaves you vulnerable to losing your whole music collection if you lose your iPod. Ripping music to a computer before moving it to an iPod creates a backup music library on your computer that will still be there even if your Nano gets abducted by the family dog. Archiving your music collection using iLoad and an external hard drive may give you the same results, but it starts getting complicated. Suddenly your computerphobic grandparent is saddled with an iLoad, an iPod, and an external USB hard drive. One has to wonder if buying them an inexpensive laptop might have been a better option (plus, maybe they'll graduate to e-mail someday).
Performance While the iLoad works as advertised, using an off-the-shelf computer would get the job done just as fast or faster. A computer would also give you access to album artwork, music videos, lyrics, podcasts, and a whole universe of information. Still, presuming that for some reason a computer is simply not an option (let's also forget for a moment that the iLoad is, in fact, a computer), the iLoad does what it says, and the ripped MP3 audio sounds comparable to the results you'd get out of iTunes.
However, even after suspending our computer-loving sensibilities, there were some frustrations we encountered with the iLoad that may send technophobe grandparents into a tizzy. For starters, there's no clearly labeled Eject button. Let's say mom puts her John Denver CD into the iLoad, only to suddenly realize that she already has it on her iPod. Naturally, she would look for the Eject button. Try as she might, she likely will not find it. Maybe (like us) she'll try powering the iLoad off and booting it back up (wrong again). To eject a CD from the iLoad, you will need to press the "down" arrow to the right of the screen. The "up" arrow will eject your iPod.
Another potential headache is the iLoad's built-in music database, which it uses to match CDs with their appropriate artist and song title information. While the iLoad uses a database of nearly 2 million songs, it doesn't have everything, and to keep it current you must either connect it to the Internet using the iLoad's Ethernet connection or subscribe to periodic database updates that arrive on CD by mail. If you're using the iLoad to rip a collection of oldies but goodies, you should be fine. However, if the CD you're ripping is hot off the charts, or worse, a mix CD given to you by a friend, you'll need to find an Internet connection or make peace with the idea that the songs will display as "Unknown Artist" on your iPod.
Last but not least, there's the issue of fan noise. The first thing we noticed when we powered up the iLoad is that the interior fans used to cool the computer put out a constant and unusually loud noise.
Final thoughts The iLoad concept poses an interesting question: Do we need to use our personal computer to mediate the transfer of music from CDs to an iPod? I believe there is probably great solution out there for computerphobic music lovers, but sneaking a noisy, crippled computer into a lunchbox-size enclosure with a small display is probably not the best idea. Still, it is the only off-the-shelf solution we've seen so far, and despite its flaws, it does work as advertised.
Take your router anywhere — even in the car — if you’ve got EV-DO to power its backhaul connection to the Internet. The good, the bad and the ugly in testing the laptop 3G capabilities of one of America's biggest mobile operators.
As a recent Comcast service outage clearly demonstrated to me, many of us work in a world that’s increasingly dependent on Internet access. I have a Verizon Wireless EV-DO 3G card for my notebook to provide Internet access when I travel, but that couldn’t help my co-workers during my cable Internet service outage. Fortunately, when the outage occurred, I was in the process of reviewing D-Link’s DIR-450 3G Mobile Router for EV-DO Networks.
The Basics
The DIR-450 is a traditional D-Link router with many of the advanced features I liked when I reviewed both the DIR-635 and the DIR-655 routers. The DIR-450 is housed in a case virtually identical to that used on the DIR-635.
Only when you look at the rear of the DIR-450 will you notice that instead of an Ethernet WAN port, there’s a PC card slot to accommodate an EV-DO card.
For sharing the EV-DO Internet connection, the DIR-450 includes four 10/100 LAN ports as well as a standards-based 802.11g radio featuring Atheros’ Super-G technology. It uses traditional NAT (network address translation) technology to map the public IP address of your EV-DO card onto a private network. An SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewall protects your private network from attacks and unwanted intrusions.
Why a 3G Router?
There are many potential uses for a router that lets you share your 3G connection. Some examples might include the following:
* When working at client sites, consultants and auditors frequently are denied access to the client’s network for security reasons, but they still need to communicate with each other and with their home office. * Groups of employees can create ad-hoc Internet-connected workgroups in hotel conference rooms when the hotel doesn’t supply an Internet connection. * Emergency responders can set up an ad-hoc wireless network quickly at the scene of an accident or emergency to access vital information and resources. * On vacation, multiple family members traveling with laptops can all stay connected with friends (and, unfortunately, the office). * You might live in an area where cellular Internet access is the only service available; you can share the Internet connection with other computers on your home network.
Setup
The DIR-450 has an eight-page printed quick install guide. This guide, as well as the user manual, is also supplied on CD. However, there is no CD-Based installation wizard as was supplied with other D-Link routers. Instead, the quick install guide instructs you to plug in your EV-DO card, connect one of the LAN ports to your computer, and browse to the default IP address (192.168.0.1).
You can choose either to manually configure your settings or use the built-in setup wizard. Clicking on the setup wizard takes you to a second page where you can choose a wizard for setting up your Internet connection, or a wizard for configuring your wireless security. The Internet connection wizard lets you set an administrative password for the router, set your time zone and configure the router for your EV-DO card. I chose manual configuration. I selected my EV-DO card from the drop-down list and hit "save." The router rebooted with the new configuration and connected to the Internet after the reboot. It was that easy.
The DIR-450 currently supports a total of 19 wireless broadband (aka, wireless WAN, or WWAN) cards. Compatible service providers in the US include ACS Wireless, Alltel, Cellular South, Embarq, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless, and many others in Canada. It will work with cards from Sierra Wireless, Novatel, Kyocera and others. In fact, during the review process, additional supported cards were added via a firmware upgrade.
D-Link also sells the DIR-451, which is essentially a DIR-450 that supports UMTS or HSDPA cellular data networks. Compatible service providers in the US for the DIR-451 are Cingular (AT&T) and T-Mobile.
Though the DIR-450 ships with wireless security disabled, the wireless security wizard walks you through naming your wireless network, choosing the appropriate level of security and setting your pre-shared WPA or WEP key. Again, I selected manual configuration. You can enable Super G mode or 802.11g-only mode (this unit doesn't do pre-11n), disable SSID broadcast, and enable auto channel scan, which selects the best operating channel for the DIR-450. It supports WEP (64 or 128 bit), WPA, WPA2 and WPA2 Auto. There’s no support for WPA2 enterprise, but frankly, in a mobile router, you’d probably never use that feature.
LAN setup is quite straightforward. Out of the box, you don’t really even need to configure it, as the built-in DHCP server is enabled with a default IP address pool of 100 addresses. The router does support DHCP reservation for mapping specific IP addresses to specific computers on the network based upon their MAC address, a feature I really like; the LAN configuration page shows you a list of Host names, IP addresses assigned, and their corresponding MAC addresses.
A click on the Advanced tab reveals that the DIR-450 retains many of the advanced features found in D-Link’s top-of-the-line models, including virtual servers, port forwarding, application rules (for port triggering), MAC address filtering and Web site filtering. As you’ll find in other recent D-Link routers, the right side of the screen displays context-sensitive “Helpful Hints.” The support tab above the hints column takes you to an index page that provides more detailed information about menu items and configuration parameters.
The DIR-450 lacks the quality of service (QoS) engine that’s built into both the DIR-635 and the DIR-655. That makes sense, since EV-DO provides a relatively low-speed connection to the Internet — it's no cable modem — and you’re unlikely to be doing voice or video over those links. I did try a Skype VoIP connection through the DIR-450, and while I was able to connect and hold a conversation, the audio report I received said that it sounded like a bad cell phone connection. That’s not too surprising, considering the latency on the EV-DO network. My ping response time to www.google.com, accessed through the Tools menu, averaged 250ms, compared to the 17ms response time through my cable connection.
Information from http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com
