Don't get me wrong, I really like this software and some of its unique capabilities. My favorites:

1. Voice selection of preset destinations.
2. Vehicle speed profiles. This is sort of a misnomer, because it affects the
road preferences. For example, set to "Motorcycle", it gives preference
to 2-lane roads, which us motorcyclists prefer over straight line
Interstate highways (AKA "The Slab").
3. Map export can make very efficient maps for long, multi-state trips.
4. Map compression is the best there is.
5. The woman's voice for voice navigation is very pleasant.
6. Skin preference is a nice feature. I made a nice black and white one
that shows up well in direct sunlight when the backlight is off.
7. It's nice that the software lets you install into Built-in Storage (RAM)
or the Memory Card.
8. I have no doubt that this is the best software available for long distance
motorcycle or auto touring.

Short list of bugs:

1. "Start" button icon sometimes takes several taps to get it to work.
2. Landscape mode text is unreadable on QVGA screen (320x240, WM2003SE). Map icons are also difficult to read. The "Start" button doesn't work at all in Landscape. The satellite count also is unreadable.
3. The "Info Bar" doesn't even appear in Landscape.
4. Map Export on the PC only seems to display up to 16 names in the pulldown
menu. This goes for city, zip code and POI lists that I've tried so far.
The list is alphabetical/numerical, and the POIs for restaurants in my
neighborhood are only go from A to E. There is also no choice, as there is
on the PPC, for subcategories of restaurants (but that's a feature that
needs to be added, not really a bug).


Wish list of improvements to future versions of OCN:

1. More natural address entry like:
12345 Nowhere Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90066

This can currently be accomplished by using Contacts, but it would be
nice as an option for entry within OCN.

The current system often runs search for extended periods of time before
it finds the street

2. Select which POIs to display. For example, if you're only looking for
Italian restaurants, that's all that would be displayed. Or Motels and gas
stations only. No reason to have a bunch of POIs you have no interest in
cluttering up the map. You almost have this with POI names and categories,
it would be nice to have the same things in the text interface available
with map view.

Also, gas stations and motels could have a longer search radius. 32 miles
from your current position isn't really far enough.

Finally, search in direction of travel would also be a useful option.
Doesn't do much good to find out about POIs you've passed in a direction
that you're not going to turn around to go in unless you're very low
on fuel.


3. Addresses and phone numbers on POIs as an export optionfrom "MapExport".I
was at a meeting at a warehouse and we were trying find the nearest
Domino's Pizza to deliver to us.

We found it, but no number. When we called "directory assistance", we
couldn't pinpoint which one was nearest us, since Los Angeles has
around 100 Domino's Pizzas.

We broke up the meeting early and went our separate ways for food. We
never could find the right Domino's or any other nearby pizza delivery
place.

4. Tap and hold on a street or POI to bring up the street (or POI)name and
pin it to the map. And save the info to the map file so it will be there
whenever you're in that section of the map until you manually clear it
(or clear all pinned up notes). Going to another screen (as happens now)
taxes the human memory too much. That's what pocket computers are for.

Too often a street's name is off the screen and it would be nice to
be able to put a flag with the street name and optional notes on that.

Besides identifying street names, this would be useful for home brewed
POIs.

Wish list continued:

5. It would be real handy to get street address numbers with tap and hold
and pin those as well. This is good for giving others information
about a destination and makes you look like a genius for having
that information a couple of clicks away.

My situation the other day was that a location was on 5th street between
Olive and Hill. But I couldn't give everyone an address, so I looked
like a useless idiot. Sure, I could get there without a problem,
but there were other people involved with other vehicles, and in
Los Angeles, it's not easy following others to a destination with
multiple vehicles involved.

6. With selective POIs possible, for example with only gas stations and
motels displayed it would be good to see them when zoomed much further
out than is possible now.

When I'm on the motorcycle, which has a range of 200-225
miles at maximum (and that's a lot for a motorcycle) and sometimes much
less with a head wind, it would be nice to zoom out 100 miles on our
remote Western highways and know whether we can pass the gas station
that's coming up. You don't want to stop every 65 miles if you don't have
to. I'd imagine this would be useful for auto drivers as well.

For example, I'm planning a trip, and looking at gas stops between
Tucumcari, NM and Amarillo, TX, and I have to zoom in and scroll and
scroll and scroll to find the next gas stop.

7. Independent audio volume, instead of system volume. When I'm on the road
I use my Pocket PC as a music player, and when the navigation voice volume
is at a pleasant level, the music is too quiet. I've got the same request
with the music player people. I can set the music player volume lower,
but not higher than the system volume. It would be nice if I could set
the volume for the voice commands lower than system volume.

8. Mute voice icon on map during navigation (without leaving map view).
Without muting audio for other
programs. Sometimes a route to a new destination is a frequently travelled
one and only the last mile is different.

9. Ability to set buttons to specific OCN navigator windows, so we don't
have to quit map view to set a new destination.

10.Ability to set no buttons or leave system buttons intact. For example
I have hardware buttons assigned for my MP3 player software, and it would
be nice to turn volume up and down, and skip a song without having to exit
task switch to the MP3 program, which would require pulling over. One
button is reserved for "return to the Today Screen" in all programs that
I use.

11.Ability to reset satellite information without a restart. Several times
my maps have gone out of sync with the GPS signal. OCN takes a long time
to restart, and resetting the GPS info would be very useful and a major
time saver.

12.Main arterial street names visible when zoomed out farther than now (like
a five mile view).

13.Main arterial street names always visible on the screen. Why on earth
are they displayed off the edge of the screen now anyway?

14.Destination street address displayed. It's a pain to look it up and it
isn't always obvious which building is yours. This would also help
in the case of GPS inaccuracies. I'm sitting at the curb of my house, I
have my street address as a destination, and it tells me I am 200-350 feet
away. That happens sometimes.

15.Avoid highway should allow a start and end, and be storeable. If you want
to avoid a dirt road, you might want to avoid it all the time. Or suppose
it's a road that is always clotted with traffic (we don't have TMC in the
US, and don't know what the distance a delay will be)? When traffic is
heavy you want to avoid it during heavy traffic times every time. But
sometimes when the road is clear, take that "avoid road" off the list for
the current route. For example, I want to avoid 10, 110 and 101 at all
costs when I get close to downtown Los Angeles. I don't want to be re-
routed to get back to 110 or 101 when I get off the freeway.

16.Be able to switch to "Landscape" while program is running.

17.Search feature without having to exit map view.

18.More accuracy in zip codes. My area is 90066. For some reason it keeps
telling me my house address is in 90025. Actually, my postal district
is "Mar Vista" which won't even show up in results, but it's technically
Los Angeles.

19.Why do you have to quit "Map View" to press the "Start Navigation" button?

20.While I really like the woman's voice, text-to-speech as an option would
allow the software to announce street names as they come up. Good for high
density areas as well as an aid in learning an area that you're driving
in and compensation when the GPS is inaccurate. (A friend who used a
system similar to OCN said he got around Boston, but has no idea where he
went).

21.Turn on/off (categorized, see #2) POIs without leaving map view.

22.Map Export on PC needs POI subcategories, addresses and telephone numbers,
as well as the suggested "show POI categories on Map" feature,
suggested above for the PPC software.

First of all, thanks very much for your sincere and honest opinions on the OnCourse Navigator 4. We appreciate your efforts and excellent points.

Here are our responses to your comments:

Bugs:
1. Do you mean “Start navigation” button? Do you also mean that your PDA / touch screen is not responding according to your taps/clicks?

2. Would you please send in a screen capture to support@OnCourseNavigator.com to address this issue? As far as we are concerned, this is a new issue and has never been reported.

3. Would you please send in a screen capture to support@OnCourseNavigator.com to address this issue? As far as we are concerned, this is a new issue and has never been reported.

4. MapExport Tools does show only the main category of the Point Of Interest. Subcategories is available in the Point of Interest Search from your PDA. For example, POI category of Restaurant has 9 sub categories listed such as Fast Food, Deli Sandwich, Sea Food, Brewpub, etc…

=======================================================
Wish list:
1. Alternative address entry is being worked on at the moment. Please stay tuned.

2. Something is in the works to handle this request.

3. Would you please tell us how far in term of radius miles you wish to see?

4. Excellent idea. We will push for this feature.

5. Address is currently on the POI but not the telephone number. If you were to tap on a specific POI icon, you will get the complete address in a pop up window.

There are 2 ways to address your scenario:
a) Use the Nearby search feature under Point of Interest. Note, Nearby button will only be enabled if you have GPS position fix.

b) Tap and hold on a POI icon of a Domino pizza near to your location in Map View and select Start navigation from the Task and tap on Execute to be automatically routed to the location.

4. Good news, home brewed integration of POI is in the works and we will notify all existing users when this feature is available.

To set a flag to a specific location so that it is visible on your Map View, you can simply add then as a Waypoint/Stopover. To do this, you should hold and tap on a POI icon, select “Add to route” under Task and then tap on Execute button.


5. Please refer to the online movie tour for setting up a route simulation without the need of GPS fix. You will need to have Macromedia Flash installed to view the movie from your Microsoft IE Browser. For more info, please refer to the complete user guide on “Several destinations”. The URL for the movie tour is: http://www.oncoursenavigator.com/media/P_Demo3_.html

6. This may be impossible as POI is the same as other screen elements and their size on the screen will be reduced proportionally as you zoom out. Our recommendation for you is to add a new route as a waypoint by using the Nearby search within the POI page.

7. Yes, this has been requested by existing customers and we are looking into a solution for this.

8. Yes but this will be considered.

9. Did you mean to set a new way point or stopover? If yes, please follow the same technique described above on point 4.

10. Well, you can do this easily via a 2 steps:
a) Assigned one of your buttons for Today.
b) Assigned a second hardware button to open launch your MP3 program.

Make sense?

11. This issue is a caused by the current limitation in the Bluetooth implementation of the Microsoft Pocket PC OS. There is no auto handshake supported by the OS at the mean time to re-establish a connection with a Bluetooth GPS receiver as each Bluetooth device is assign with a unique token / IP address. Hence, if a connection is broken (by turning off your PDA or Bluetooth GPS receiver), you will have to go thru the process of turning on the Bluetooth GPS first and then let OcN go thru the handshake process. This is a common behavior in all other GPS products in the market.

However, if you are using CompactFlash or Serial GPS receiver, OcN automatically connects you as soon as you turn on your PDA.


12. Impossible, reason=see point 6 above.

13. Sorry but we could not understand your description. Would you please send us a screen capture with a description of actually street name example?

14. This is possible especially when you are tracking less than satellites and your GPS position is not as accurate as you were tracking about 8 or 10 satellites. This is not a problem of the OcN software instead this is a variable of the random inaccuracy of the GPS position date.

15. Agreed and will consider the storeable avoid road profile. You should not be routed back to major highway if you set the to Interstates choice to “Forbidden” instead of Avoid or Permitted.

16. Impossible as this is an inherent limitation imposed by Microsoft WM 2003 SE. So, until Microsoft fixes/improves this, screen elements will NOT automatically be redrawn based on your screen mode changes.

17. Excellent point and will be considered.

18. Has been reported and are being worked on.

19. No you do not have too. Would you please explain in detail the steps to reproduce this behavior?

20. Yes, agree but GPS software like OcN may give inaccurate reporting of the street you are traveling or delays in keeping up with your actual position is normally caused by the weak GPS signals. On most of the time, you can see that the number of satellites tracked will reduce from 8 or 10 to just about 3 to 5 as you are moving closer into downtown. We recommend you acquire an external booster antenna and place it on the top of your roof for maximum GPS reception.

21. Excellent point and will be considered.

22. Excellent point and will be considered.


==============================================================
How about a contest?
Phew, this should be the longest topic in the forum and we should be running a contest here for the most creative wish list. The reward would be a FREE copy of the upcoming OnCourse Navigator 5?

Anyone interested? Deadline for this contest is March 15th!

We welcome any comments/tips/experiences you wish to share with other users.

Thanks very much.

OnCourse Navigator Team
www.OnCourseNavigator.com

==============================================================

Thank you for responding to my suggestions. Here are the clarifications of your requests.

Bugs:

1. Page 31 of the manual PDF manual:

"Start
Tap this icon to start another program on your Pocket PC without
quitting OnCourse Navigator. This may be useful if, e.g., you
want to modify a contact’s address data without interrupting the
navigation. Tap this icon again to return to OnCourse
Navigator."

It's also useful if you are a long distance to your next instruction, and want to use your Pocket PC as an MP3 player (which is how I use it), or have a task switcher on the top line that lets you switch directly to a program without having to return to the "Today Screen".

2. Screen captures sent.

3. Screen captures sent.

4. I'm talking about the pull down menues. They display a maximum of 16 entries, even though there are far more availble, and it cuts them off alphabetically.
Use a fairly dense city like Los Angeles or New York for testing and you'll see.

Yes, the PDA does list them all. But it would be nice to plan trips on the full sized screen of the PC, and it's plainly obvious that this is a coding oversight, and not a deliberate limitation of the Map Export software.

When listing restaurants, I get a pull-down menu, with a scroll bar. When the bar is scrolled all the way, the total number of restaurants is no more than 16, while hundreds are available.

Wish List:
Good news on 1 and 2

3. I wasn't thinking of exporting telephone numbers and addresses as a limit to a radius, but as an option for an entire map. Of course, this would be expected to inflate the size of the exported map. But it would be a choice for the customer to make. The comparison I would make would be to Microsoft Streets and Trips on a PC or Laptop, which has that information on all of its POIs.

4. Thank you. I'd additional suggest a way to hide all of these pin up information windows as well so they don't obscure too many streets when zoomed out.

5. I'm afraid this is not true. It gives only the POI name, zip code and city. For example, I tap and hold on a local restaurant. The information it gives is:
Lares Restaurant
90405 Santa Monica

As far as being navigated to the destination, that is true. However, it is insufficient for the purpose of finding a restaurant, calling telephone information, and getting a telephone number when there are many restaurants in a chain, often within the same zip code. As well, I've been navigated to a location, where the restaurant was located within a street crowded with restaurants, and sometimes you can't see the restaurant's sign. An exact address helps locate it exactly, and which side of the street it is on.

It is also insufficient information sometimes when making decisions or asking others for information about a restaurant. At the very least, you need the street name.

4 (again) I figured this out. But, it is only available for a specific route, instead of being an addition that is available every time you plan a route or are seeking information. As well, as I have done, you can use a "Save Destination" and "Show on Map". But these things are many clicks worth of effort, and dangerous to use when driving. They are also time intensive when you're talking to people in a group and trying to reach a group concensus about where to eat.

Something like OCN can be used for so much more in daily life than just getting in your car and having it guide you to a place.

5 (again) I'm not sure I see how this helps. In simulation, you have to wait, in real time, to get to the destination. That means, waiting 20 minutes if that's how long the trip takes. The information is available in the "Route List". It should be easy to just tap and hold on that destination and get the address that is in the already in the destination list, instead of the usual:
Jumbo's
90027 Los Angeles

6. To clarify the issue, it is not the size of the icons that is the problem. It is that they are not displayed at all when zoomed out.

In order to find these POIs, you have to be zoomed in at a mile or less. Not very convenient when you're driving or riding a motorcycle 600 miles in a day (a typical distance in the West), and all you want to know is where the next gas station is likely to be found so you know if you can pass the current one coming up. Perhaps this should be a user definable option, since you'll see a lot of gas pumps in the city, but they'll be far between on the open road between cities (Major cities are 200-400 miles apart in the West).

I'd suggest, as an example, looking along Interstate 40 between Albuquerque, NM and Amarillo, TX as an example.

Since OCN is, IMO, the very best Navigation and map software for long distance travel, this is a feature that would be commensurate with that capability.

Finding waypoints takes the exact step I originally described in #6. Zoom in, and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to find the next gas. Waypoint or not, this is a lot more effort than is necessary which would be unnecessary if gas stations and motels were capable of being displayed when zoomed out to a 100 mile map view.

7. I'm not sure you realize that I am also an existing customer as well. This isn't all theory for me ;)

I'm happy to hear you are considering this as well as #8.

9. Hmmm. I can see that this is confusing. The feature I'm requesting is user definable hardware buttons. Which can be defined to any specific menu within OCN, without having to go through all the backward steps in-between, and without having to scroll through the requester to go from, say, "Save destination" to "Add route point".

Right now, hardware buttons only allow you to scroll the screen, select, and go back, one single step at a time.

10. That is the workaround I currently have. My MP3 software also allows the buttons to be active in any program which does not have its own button assignments, so I could have OCN on screen on a long distance trip, but adjust the volume or skip a song without having to leave the map view.
I leave the MP3 player running while I'm in OCN. I currently have to go three steps to accomplish a volume change, and it does amount to something of a driving distraction.

11. I have managed to fix this problem with an automatic Bluetooth program called "OZBT". This program turns on Bluetooth when OCN starts, turns it off when I have other programs on that don't need Bluetooth, turns it off when I terminate OCN, and when OCN is up, makes the Bluetooth connection very tenacious. I can turn the GPS on or off, and OCN will pick it right back up now, since it makes the Bluetooth connection very program specific.
This also allows me to turn off the PDA, reset it, etc. Once the intial handshake is done with the Bluetooth GPS device, I haven't had to worry about it since.

It's a freeware program, and you might want to tell your developer about it, since it might make a nice feature in future versions of OCN if they want to license it. It cures the mentioned problem, and adds a nice feature.

12. This does not appear to be true. As you zoom out from one level where the street names are visible to another, the size of the text remains the same. Is this a Navteq issue?

13. I will send a screen capture.

14. Sometimes there are fewer satellites visible. I'm generally getting between 6 and 8, and that seems good enough for most functions.

But how hard could it be to display the street number as well as the street name in the last 200 feet, or when you get to the destination? That information is stored in the destination list. We're talking a simple database function here, and my request is to recall that information to the map view, not to calculate the street address from the often not optimum GPS signal.

15. While your suggestion will work in the case of Interstates, it won't work for a surface road that turns out to be a dirt road (a common problem with Navteq maps), or a non-Interstate road with construction on it.

16. I can't address the impossibility with the OCN code. But several software products which I use do automatically adjust when you switch to Landscape mode. Two examples I can think of are the MortPlayer MP3 software, and Pocket Internet Explorer.

I wouldn't even consider suggesting this if it didn't take so long to start OCN on my 312mhz Axim. With the Southern California map I cut, it takes over a minute to start.

17. I'm glad you think this suggestion has merit. Also glad 18 is being worked on.

19. There are several steps required to get to the "Start Navigation" request if you haven't already scrolled to "Start Navigation". The default request is "Search for Nearby Destination" I think.
I guess, what I'm requesting is a more streamlined request window which displays the list of options directly, without having to tap on the window that defaults to "Save Destination" scroll down to "Start Navigation" press OK, then you get another window that says "Execute Cancel", before you can start Navigating.

20. I agree that the external booster is a good idea. I'm just suggesting that maybe in a future version or two, a text to speech option would announce the street you are to turn on to rather than "In 300 feet, turn right". It just fleshes out the voice feature more completely for dense cities, especially when tall buildings are common.

21. Thank you. There are many steps involved in turning POIs on and off, and it's inconvenient when navigating.

22. For Map Export, it would be useful for the OCN guys to see what's available in a common (and cheap) program like Microsoft Streets and Trips. I'm still using that for some trip planning, and translating the information for OCN on the PPC, with manually entered info typed into the "Contacts" list. But it's making my Contacts list very crowded.

Hello Frankenbike. Once again, thanks for your support and effort to help us improve OcN 4.

As you may have already heard from other OcN4 in forums, all development efforts are 100% focus on Version 5 now and all reported wishlist/improvements will be considered in the new version.

All existing users will get version 5 for free when it becomes available in around middle of June/early July.

Please watch this topic for more updates. Thanks!

As promised, all existing and new customers who bought OcN4 will get a free upgrade to OcN5 with the following fixes and new features.

To learn more, please check out: www.OnCourseNavigator.com KB at: http://www.oncoursenavigator.com/support/issue_view.asp?ID=278


As always, any comments are welcome. Thanks!