Kane Car Pilot GPS

Kane's Car Pilot works with Ipaq Pocket PCs. It comes with a Compact Flash (CF) card jacket for the Ipaq, windscreen mounting bracket, separate GPS receiver and a Y cable, one end of which plugs into the cigarette lighter socket, one into the GPS and one into the Ipaq.

In other words, you can't carry this round the street with the receiver that comes in the box. But it does mean you can position the receiver for best results in your car, and the screen likewise.

Slip the CF card into the slot and the Kane installer will run automatically, and give you a web page with the option of launching the software, which calls itself Destinator.

When you want to plot a route you can select by street names, intersections, points of interest, which includes garages, casinos, hotels, and airports - or by postcode. And the mapping is down to house level, which is handy for long streets.

When you're driving the display adjusts in scale to match current speed, and the spoken directions, which are in a female voice, are clearly audible.

When there are two turnings close to each other, however, 'Turn right A102' would have been more helpful than just 'turn right'. Deviating from the route produced fairly quick responses - and not too many 'U turn' commands, with real new routes calculated fast.

The interface is a little awkward compared to some others we've tested - finding the points of interest is done via the destinations menu, rather than being a specific option.

And when plugging in the cable, we had to enter preferences to re-detect the GPS unit, which is annoying if you forget before moving off.

On the whole, the Car Pilot GPS is a capable performer, and the package does include major European as well as British roads, which helps justify the rather high cost.

Contact: Kane 0870 559 2000
www.kanegear.com

System requirements:
Ipaq 3800 or 3900 PocketPC