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From:Garmin
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4 of 4 customers found the following review helpful:
Incredibly Useful Gizmo, 2006-10-21
Garmin iQue M5
I'm very pleased with my little iQue M5 GPS/PDA. While it's not perfect, it's pretty darn amazing. I had actually purchased a Lowrence iWay 350 GPS, but then my husband discovered the iQue on sale at Costco for about [...] more. With the iQue offering so many more features, I returned the Lowrence and purchased the iQue. With my husband and I both having the same machines, we can beam information to each other or send them over Bluetooth.
It has taken many hours of playing around with it to get to learn the device, as it isn't very intuitive and the manuals, especially for the PDA, are limited. My husband has spent a lot of time learning to use the GPS, and he's learning its idiosyncrasies as far as planning routes and getting it to avoid routing through construction areas. It's very sophisticated and the maps are great - better detail than the Lowrence. We purchased a 2 Gig memory card and downloaded the entire map database onto it, and there were still 300 gigs to spare. I had no trouble downloading the maps or the Active Sync software. The basic GPS functions are easy to use once you get the hang of it, the voice directions are clear and concise, and it re-routes quickly if you go off course. You can plan your route in advance without having the GPS activated. This is a good idea, since it can take up to 5 minutes for the unit to locate the satellites, and you can be on your way if you've viewed your route before starting out.
I used the GPS on a trip Stratford, Canada, and it was wonderful having the Canadian maps as well as the US maps available. I even used it handheld while walking to my bed-and-breakfast from the theater. Every once in awhile there is a glitch (it said the theater was on the left, which would have taken me into the Avon River!), but it's generally right on target and I find most of the problems are operator error, such as turning too soon. The "Route to Home" feature is very convenient. Granted, the iQue doesn't always take you on the shortest route, but it will get you where you're going and if you're "directionally challenged" like I am, it becomes indispensible.
The car mounting bracket works fine. It's popped off occasionally in hot weather, but generally stays put. The bracket would be easy to move to another vehicle. The GPS would work in a cup-holder if you needed to use it in a rental car.
I've spent more time learning the PDA portion, which uses Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition. The iQue uses Outlook as its interface, so you'll have to have it installed on your computer. Not having used Outlook before, I installed Outlook on my laptop and spent some time getting familiar with it, which was helpful.
The PDA has so many functions that it's hard to even describe what this little machine can do. It will organize all of your calendar functions and contacts, checks e-mail, accesses the Internet if you get a Wi-Fi card, recognizes handwriting, has a voice recorder, interfaces with other Bluetooth units, sends alarms, has Word and Excel, even has a couple of good games. I got a separate SD card for music and downloaded a lot of songs, and the sound through headphones is quite acceptable (it has bass boost). It uses Windows Media Player so you can organize all of your playlists. You can download any programs that are available for Windows Mobile 2003, including TV shows and videos. I never thought I'd find much use for a PDA but I'm using it every day. No more little notes on scraps of paper or a separate pocket calendar, address book or even an IPod. Everything is in one handy-dandy little machine. And even though it isn't that intuitive, once you've learned the basic conventions they translate to most of the programs.
We've called Garmin Tech Support a few times and, although they are only open during regular business hours, we found American staff who are very knowledgeable about the product. Since a good GPS will run at least [...], this was a great bargain at around [...] We've purchased screen protectors and are hoping it won't wear out too quickly, as I've heard Palm Pilots tend to do. I'm really enjoying the iQue.
2 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
 Not suitable for use in a moving vehicle, 2006-08-19
It's partly my fault, of course. I bought this to use on my motorcycle. I thought the small size, especially the flat body, would fit nicely into the top of a tank bag. I also bought a special handlebar mount for it. Unfortunately, I've had nothing but trouble with it. It's slow to acquire satellites and to recalculate routes. Whether you're driving a car or a motorcycle, it's not up to the task of keeping pace with changes in your route. Maybe it was intended for pedestrians only. The user interface for the GPS is not intuitive (at least, not for me), Worse still, it freezes often when trying to download maps and when deleting stored routes. The Garmin helpline in the UK could only tell me to reset the machine each time. Not very helpful. My guess is that the combination of palm PC and GPS was too much for Garmin to handle. They should probably just stick to GPS.
9 of 9 customers found the following review helpful:
Good investment, 2006-08-15
I am kind of a person who needs a very detailed map and directions to reach a new place. If you want to get rid off taking print outs of yahoo maps or google maps and go to a new place without worry of getting lost, buy this product. I have been using this product since last 5 months and i found following points to share:
+Ve Side:
- Good screen resolution.
- Very user friendly maps and directions.
- Very nice PDA organizer to have which can be synched up with XP office easily.
- Easy to upload maps from PC/Notebook to Device.
- Gives lots of information about points of interest like gas stations, stores, restaurents near current location.
Negative side:
- Extra Costs: The memory is not sufficeint to load larger maps. I needed to buy external 1 GB SD card with faster speed so that i can load whole CA map. Make sure you buy a faster speed SD card otherwise OS will not respond quickly.
- You need some time to get used to the way it gives information. for example divice says to take a left turn in 400 feets although it is only 50 feets.
- When you are off the route, Device takes atleast 10-15 seconds to recalculate the route and if you continue going in a worng direction, device will keep calculating new route and you will be lost for few minutes.
- You need to pay extra $75 to get updated maps from Garmin. It is not free!
Overall this is a good product and a good investment.
4 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
 Works great. No lockups if you download the patch., 2006-08-11
I downloaded the patch and installed and have not had any lockup problems.
4 of 10 customers found the following review helpful:
 unhappy camper, 2006-08-01
This is one of the poorest electronics gadgets I have ever purchased. It sounds like it has some very nice features but the programming is so poor that it becomes almost unusable as a GPS. Before I purchased it I read a review about how difficult it was to download the maps and get them installed. I ignored that review, which was a huge mistake. The Garmin MQue M5 is definitely not user friendly. For example, I have yet to figure out how to find a location using the map and then plan a route to it. You have to enter a location as an address and you have to enter it exactly as Garmin has it in its memory, which is not consistant. The first three times I tried to plan a route with it, it could not find the address I wanted to go to. Even to my own home. The base map is wrong, it has my street misnamed, but shows a street with that name where no street exists. And an email to Garmin to ask what I could do to help correct this error was totally ingnored.
And the difficult operation of the unit is the best part of the story. First of all I payed extra for the next day delivery so that I could take it on a camping trip over the weekend. It did not arrive until the following week, but I was still charged for next day shipping. And then when I tried to use it on the 3 week cross-country trip for which I had really purchased it, it quit working on the 3rd day. It lost contact with the satellites and could never regain contact. I assumed that it was a software glitch, but there was nothing in the manual about how to reboot it (actually there is not much about anything in the manual). An attempt to call Garmin on my cell phone was futile because there is alwasy at least a half hour wait to get through, and as soon as you loose cell phone coverage for a second, you have to start over. It was not until I returned home and was able to spend an hour waiting on line that I got through to customer service and found out that to reboot it, you have to take out the battery pack (which I had tried), then put the cover back on and plug it into the external power supply for a few seconds, then unplug it and put the batteries back in, and then stick a pin into a tiny inconspicuous hole on the bottom and press a reset button. Now that sure is an intuitive process, which is not in the manual. Then you have to re-enter everything you ever put in or set on the unit, which is not simple task. That worked, but the latch on the antenna had broken and the on-off switch did not work properly so I had to send it in to the company for repair anyway.
So far, the PDA portion has been OK, but the GPS is a bust. It gives reasonably good directions once you get a route entered but it is useless to find a nearby resturant or motel because it doesn't show you anything on the map, it just lists the addresses of everything in town. And what it will show on the map if you zoom way in is wrong about half the time.
I thought it was silly to spend $2,000 on a GPS in a car when I could buy this unit and move it from one car to the other. Poor choice. I just ordered a new car with a GPS and this unit will become an overpriced PDA, and a rather poor one at that. Needless to say, this is the last Garmin product I will ever buy.
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