I have a car and sometimes have to deliver things all over the Taipei metropolitan area. Other times I have meetings somewhere and I need to find the fastest route, or for example I know the road it is on, but I don’t know which side of the street or which cross street it is near.
Now I can read the Chinese characters of most street signs and I can speak pretty well. I know pinyin really well and I think I can find the characters to input addresses in this way, so I was wondering if anyone is in the same situation as me and has checked out and compared several different GPS solutions offered here in Taiwan?
I am concerned about how accurate the software is in the directions it gives to me. How does it tell me to turn etc., verbally or with arrows on the on screen map or both? Will I be able to understand the computer voice? What about input? Do they have any with Hanyu pinyin input or even Tongyong? How exactly to input? Keyboard? write it on screen? (My Chinese writing sucks.) Also, what about reception? Who has the best maps? Do they all have maps for all of Taiwan?
Some of the ones I have seen are that MIO GPS PDA that you see advertised at 7/11 and the Garmin products and the PDA based products. I think there are even more solutions.
Anyway, I know there are a lot of questions, maybe I should go down to GuangHua and start asking questions. It just seems they always push whatever they got and who knows if it is really the best. I think I just need to spend a few hours down there.
I make weekly trips to that area and will ask my supplier for his advise on the subject. I buy on a larger scale so he offers me more direct answers as he usually has to replace things for me should I be led down the wrong road(it’s basically in his greater interest). Besides, I’ll be in need of one in the near future as well so I suppose I should get cracking a little early in the game, as opposed to getting caught with my pants down later.
Hobart, tell me more. After using GPS navigation in Europe I love the thing but know nothing about what is available here. I have a Palm PDA which I suspect ain’t going to cut it in Taiwan – no software – but will buy something else for local use if it is the right price and works. So, spill.
I let my brother-in-law test the Mio 168. He told me the maps suck, but the device itself is not that bad so he reinstalled onto this device what most people in Taiwan consider the best maps, PapaGo. He said it works like a charm now.
However, I will let him use that for deliveries and I will get a DVD car based one with popup LCD screen for my car. The maps are even better than PapaGo, but it is very expensive. The system I am looking is the Panasonic CN-DV1800.
I would recommend if you already have a Palm based PDA, go to GuangHua or NOVA and look around as there are many shops that are specializing in GPS hardware and software. There is a Palm based system, I am almost sure of it. Why I think I even have a free promotional CD here that they gave me to work with my wife’s Palm based Clie PDA. I will look around.
You can look at some of the hardware here. This site use to review PDA GPS equipment but now it looks like it routes to a shopping site. http://www.pdaordie.com
PS: That Road Navigation site is for some trading company. They aren’t even a manufacturer and it looks to me like they don’t sell retail in Taiwan but try to resell Taiwan and China made GPS products to the West.
Thanks for the info. Hardware I don’t need if I can find something for the Palm since I already have a GPS receiver for that. It’s the Taiwan software, in particular maps, that I really need.
