Product Description

Add the powerful navigation capability of GPS to your Palm m500 with the Magellan GPS Companion. Sleek, lightweight and affordable, the GPS Companion offers the advantages of GPS technology and a new level of confidence, safety and dependability to your business and recreational travels. Whether your are in the urban canyons of the city or deep in the country, attach the lightweight GPS Companion to your Palm m500 series and you'll always know where you are and where you're going to within a few meters.The GPS Companion comes complete with advanced navigation software. Download and navigate with detailed, street-level mapping of the entire continental United States. Rand McNally's award winning StreetFinder Deluxe travel navigation software includes over one million points of interest to easily guide you to gas stations, hotels, restaurants, ATMs, airports, tourism locales, businesses and more. Easily pinpoint your location on the map and let your GPS Companion guide your travels, turn-by-turn. Edit and create your own maps to plot your journey, then HotSync to your handheld and let the adventure begin. Nav Companion software allows you to mark waypoints and save positions and directions for making return trips quickly, safely and easily.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49294 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Magellan
• Model: 980621-01
• Dimensions: 2.00 pounds

Features

• Sleek and lightweight design
• Combines GPS technology and Rand McNally Streetfinder navigation software
• Provides turn by turn guidance to your destination
• Graphical GPS displays your speed, heading, distance to destination, and more
• Compatible with Palm m500

From the Manufacturer
Add the powerful navigation capability of GPS to your PalmTM m500 with the Magellan GPS Companion. Sleek, lightweight and affordable, the GPS Companion offers the advantages of GPS technology and a new level of confidence, safety and dependability to your business and recreational travels. Whether your are in the urban canyons of the city or deep in the country, attach the lightweight GPS Companion to your Palm m500 series and you'll always know where you are and where you're going to within a few meters. The GPS Companion comes complete with advanced navigation software. Download and navigate with detailed, street-level mapping of the entire continental United States. Rand McNally’s award winning StreetFinder Deluxe travel navigation software includes over one million points of interest to easily guide you to gas stations, hotels, restaurants, ATMs, airports, tourism locales, businesses and more. Easily pinpoint your location on the map and let your GPS Companion guide your travels, turn-by-turn. Edit and create your own maps to plot your journey, then HotSync to your handheld and let the adventure begin. Nav Companion software allows you to mark waypoints and save positions and directions for making return trips quickly, safely and easily. Turn-by-turn guidance
Enter an address or point of interest and your GPS Companion will provide turn-by-turn directions. Audible signals prompt each turn while your position on the electronic map moves with you to indicate your location to within a few meters. Save routes and waypoints
Store your routes and waypoints to record your journeys and find your way back again and again. Zoom
Zoom in or out to see your position in fine detail or broad over-view of the area you're navigating. Superior tracking
Graphic GPS displays show your speed, heading, distance to destination and more. Designed for high-performance under challenging conditions, your GPS Companion maintains a signal lock, even in urban canyons. WAAS accuracy
Assisted by the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), GPS Companion for your Palm n500 is accurate to within 3 meters or better. Recharge your Palm m500 on the road
GPS Companion serves as a charger for your Palm m500 series when plugged in to the auxiliary power port or cigarette lighter of your vehicle with the optional 12v cable. Third-party software support
GPS Companion communicates with the standard NMEA 2.1 communications protocol supported by most GPS and mapping software.

Customer Reviews

Good, but could be much better
Before I got this GPS, thought the Magellan Companion was a great idea. The unit itself can run for 12 hours on 2 AAA batteries, the software is loaded on my Palm, I can use it to charge my Palm using the power adapter and I can store the maps on SD memory card on my Palm.

I received the unit and it was light, pretty well built and snapped on to the M505 very nicely. The Nav Companion software for the Palm was also pretty good. However, the Rand McNally mapping software, which is a seperate application was another story. When I first loaded the software on my computer, it looked very promising. It took a lot more space that I had anticipated, but since it had details map of the US as well as thousands of POI, it was that big of an issue.

The trouble began when I try to download a map to my Palm, it kept telling me that the current map area was too large. Then I discovered that I had to zoom in to leve 7 before it allow me to export to my Palm. Well, at level 7 of the Los Angeles area is almost 10MB. I went ahead and download the map to my memory card.

Even worst, when I actually connected my Palm to the GPS and turned it on, it took almost 5 minutes before I got a lock. During my driving trip, I came to the edge of the map that I downloaded and I got a message that I have reach the end of the map and that the GPS will turn off. I could still use the Nav Companion software to track my coordinates, but no map.

So in conclusion, I think it's a good product, but the mapping software needs some major improvements. At least my MAP 330 has a basemap.

Great hardware, horrible software
First, the good part: The GPS receiver is very light and tough, and the included basic plotting software works great.
Now, the bad part: If you buy this, throw out the Rand McNally software. It's horrible. The maps will NOT scroll on the palm, and instead will draw for literally 1 second your position, then go black for 10-15 seconds, then draw again for 1 second. Plus, you can run it from a SD card, OR you can run it from RAM. If you want to install the application in RAM and the maps (which are HUGE - 6MB-8MB for most city's metropolitan areas) on the SD card, you are out of luck.
I've downloaded a demo of Mapopolis and it appears to be about 1000x (no joke) faster, GPS-compatible, and supports RAM & SD card dual usage.

Magellan GPS Companion GPS Software
The GPS unit is very slick. I have tried two software packages with it: the Rand McNally Streetfinder software that comes with the unit, and the Mapopolis software. Unlike another reviewer, I had no problem with the Streetfinder software scrolling slowly. However, there is a known bug that won't let you use the software with an SD card--the program hangs trying to find maps. I talked with their support about this, but the fix they gave me did not solve the problem. However, once you get it running with the GPS, the maps are great! They are much more readable to someone with aging eyes than the Mapopolis maps, and they scroll just as fast (on a Palm M515). They also have a lot of point of interest data (Hotels, parking lots, etc.)--more than Mapopolis has. Plus, it's free! Mapopolis isn't free anymore, and you have to buy Map Packs or individual maps and download them.