VCommand GPS: Voice Activated, talking GPS unit. Better than a personal gas station attendant
Written: Jun 17 '05 (Updated May 19 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Not getting lost, human voice not computer voice, millions of POI’s
Cons: Unit has to be returned to get upgraded
The Bottom Line: If you get lost, if you drive to a lot of new destinations, this unit will save you some major headaches.
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| jckatz's Full Review: VCommand VCom Car GPS Receiver |
UPDATE
If you are interested I found this video of the product in action.
http://snipurl.com/gewb (the snip url will take you there).
Now on the with review
A long, long time ago, I wrote a review of a product I truly loved.
The Pronounced Technologies AudioNav was the poor mans GPS, it had no screen it didn’t even have GPS. You told it where you where and then you told it where you wanted to go. It told you how to get there. When you finished a STEP, you told it you NEXT and it told you the next step of your journey.
The system had GREAT Voice Recognition Software/Hardware.
FAST FORWARD 4 YEARS
My Audio Nav was on its last leg, I no longer lived in an area that my maps worked (it was CD-Rom based and every single street name in the was READ by a professional voice talent. I still to this day have an image in my head of this poor guy going to work every day for months reading. Apple, Apricot, April, Apron, etc. by the time he got to Zoological Boulevard he must have been readying to jump off an unnamed bridge. Since would you want to be reminded up the Week you spent reading Golden, Goose, Green, Greenbelt, Green Sleeves, Etc.
This unit doesn’t have the same limits as the CD-ROM base unit it has a 20 GB hard drive so they managed to store every road in the united states inside this little black box.
So why am I comparing the $300 Pronounced AudioNav to the Vcommand GPS unit that cost $900?
Well it is simple, every command that I used on the old AudioNav still works on the Vcommand (makes learning EASY). Not only that, but the voices is the same. Not similar and not just that poor dude that had to read the name of every street in America, but the voice of my Navigator is the same also. A few of the voices are different, this is on functions there were not available to the non-GPS unit, for example when it told me, I could not receive a GPS signal (I was inside a parking garage).
USABILITY
First thing to understand about this unit is THERE IS NO SCREEN! This is not a bad thing, this a good thing. PEOPLE driving a car should not be like surfing the Internet. You should not be writing a word document, checking Fark.com, and reading Epinions reviews at the same time. You should be DRIVING PERIOD
//end rant (for you who fark)
The Voice Navigation unit, lets you do the importing thing and that is DRIVE. It stays quite until you NEED it. It DINGS when you come near a TURN, it tells you how far away your turn is, and when you mess up, it tells you “RE ROUTING it then tells you how to undo your mistake. And when jckatz is driving there will be mistakes.
I recently drove in my friends car and he had a more standard naviagor with a screen. Unlike mine his only told you to TURN left (it never said the name of the street). I have learned NO screen based systems tell you the name of the street. This gets confusing in crowded cities. GPS is good but in cities the single isn't as strong as in the rural areas, so knowing the name of the street is important.
Volume control is easy to reach so if you go off route for a reason, such as you need fuel for your body or your car, just turn off the volume until you get back on track, otherwise it will tell you to U-Turn at every intersection you reach.
Telling it where you are going
So you want to go somewhere?
Do you know the address?
Do you know the type of place, choice for 100’s of categories to select including BANKS (Need to find a National City ATM machine near you, not a problem) Need to find a Casino to spend you new found wealth even easier). In my case, I need to pay for the GPS unit, so away I went to the CASINO.
I told it, LOCATION,
Spelled C A S I N O (There are two modes, continuous spelling mode and single character spelling mode. I like Singe Character spelling mode it dings after each letter. Continuous as it sounds has you go at a normal speed)
Do you want to find a Casino in or around your area
I said YES.
it gave me a list of all the nearby Casino Casino’s I choice one that I have never been to so I would knew it worked or not. (BTW that was a hard Casino to get to from my location. 20 miles of back roads in the dark). I even asked the Valet if I got bum directions and he told NOPE it was perfect.
It even helped me on the DREADED CIRCLE. It said, enter Traffic Circle and exit on Second exit, dinged when I got near it. (STILL don’t like traffic circles, but GPS makes it better).
If you have an address is mind you tell it. ADDRESS
You spell the name of the STREET, example
M A D I S O N (do not give it STREET, AVENUE, ETC)
You give it STREET NUMBER
1 5 2
It then tells you there is 152 in 52 cities do you want to spell the city name
That would be a YES.
So you spell the city name,
Then it asks you , 152 N Madison Ave?
NO
152 S Madison Ave
NO
152 Madison Drive
YES
It will then tell you how to get there and how long it will take.
This is only a fictional example, needless to say higher numbers or weirdly named streets it will not have 52 cities, in that case it will be something like this
STREET NAME
Say NUMBER 1 5 0
Address
115000
Do you want 115000 State Highway 150 in Mosca, CO and you will
Say YES.
And after a trip default is to return to the place you started. Isn’t that nice :)
USER UPDATE 7/8/2005
Today I got a DQ craving. The only DQ I knew about closed a year or so ago. So I told my navigator to find me a Dairy Queen. It listed the closed one first since it was only a mile from my location, the second DQ it found was still opened, and tasty.
USER UPDATE 9/02/2005
Just got back from Yellowstone National Park. Packed my navigator in my suite case and plugged it right into the rental car. As soon as I turned it on it knew I was in the Northwest United States map. The unit did not seem to have our lodge in the point of interest maps, and the default yellowstone was the wrong entrance, later I found that each entrance was its own point of interest but it was easier just to tell it the nearest city to the enterance we wanted. The unit worked perfect getting us to and from the airport, and since it was dark and foggy on the way back it was nice not to have to read a mapquest print out.
Moral of the story? NONE
Voce Recognition
I am constantly amazed at the quality of this unit’s Voice Recognition abilities. After 4 years my old unit started to fail, its voice recognition was reduced to almost zero. Granted the unit was covered in spilled coke, and had spent summers and winters freezing and burning under the passenger side seat, or under a pile of Fast food wrappers.
The point is that I tried to use a regular microphone and the unit would not even turn on, unless their microphone was plugged in. The microphones they use are designed to work in noisy cars and only listen for the drivers voice. (Thought I do advise telling your passenger to shut up because that does confuse the system a little).
USES of this system
I should point out the only time I used this unit was when I was in Chicago for work. I was going to new and strange locations ever day. The unit was a God send. Need to find a library or town hall, tell it find me the nearest town hall, and BAMN next thing you know you are driving to a town hall so small that would could have driven past it 100 times and never seen it.
Need to find a house a 1 AM in a neighborhood that doesn’t believe in reflective street signs or street lighting for that matter. No problem, this unit will have you driving right up the correct driveway without having to resort to using police grade flashlights to find house numbers.
Best of all, thought you knew where you were going and didn’t bother to turn the unit on, no problem turn it on tell it where you want to go, and it will get you there.
Up to 99 address book entries
I can’t imagine using all 99, but home and work are always a great one to have.
Get sent to a warehouse in middle of nowhere to pick up a Toner Cartridge because your boss refused to order one when you told him we need it, but he now has a print job that needs to get done, before the end of the day. Well no problem, get the address and drive there and then tell it to take you to WORK. (drive slowly since it is his fault and he should wait).
BLACKJACK
I did tell you my first trip using the GPS was to the Casino, and I only play Black Jack, so it was useful that one of the new additions to this unit from its old Pronounce days is a game called BLACKJACK. Blackjack run by an old west type dude that reads you the cards and even does that math for you, useful on the road. You can SPLIT, DOUBLE DOWN, HIT or STAY. You can change your betting and he keeps track of your bank.
I was ahead $250 when I got to the casino and my wining streak continued with really money.
Since it was an hour and a half drive I doubt I would have turned around and not played had I lost on the way, but it did get my into the grove.
Making the technocrats happy
I don’t like just listing the technical specs of a product but a lot of people expect them so here you go. Happy happy Joy Joy
NAVIGATOR MODES
ADDRESS – Select destination based on address
POINT- Point of Interest location, example O’Hare International Airport
CATEGORY- this is where Casino comes in or ATM or BANK (complete list at end of review)
Towns-and Cities- self explanatory
INTERSECTION- this was very useful before GPS. I didn’t know where I was so I would tell it the intersections and that was how I figured out what city I was in.
DIRECTORY- your pre-set addresses
Warranty
The unit comes with a 2 year warranty and this included 2 upgrades. New roads are being built even as I speak so just like books your unit is out of date by the time you get it. But for two years they will upgrade the unit. Mail it to them and they will put new data on its hard drive. The unit you get back is not the same unit you sent.
Hopefully in the future upgrades will be handled from home, the unit does appear to have a LAN capability, but like early TIVO’s USB they are not activated.
VCom uses map information fron NAVTEQ and has 2 Million Points of Interest in the US. And here are the categories available to choose from. YIKES that is a lot.
Airport
Courthouse
Theaters
Amusement Park
Ferry
Police Station
ATM or ATM Machine
Gas Station
Rental Car
Automobile Club
Golf Course
Rest Area
Car Dealership
Grocery Store
Restaurant
Car Service
Higher Education
School
Bank
Historical Monument
Shopping Mall
Bus Station
Hospital
Ski Resort
Business-Facility
Hotel or Motel
Sports Complex
Casino
Library
Tourist Attraction
City
Marina
Tourist Information
City Hall
Museum
Town
Civic Center
Park and Ride
Train Station
College
Park
University
Commuter Rail Station
Parking Garage
Winery
Convention Center
Parking Lot
Restaurant Sub-Categories
African
Fast Food
Middle Eastern
American
Filipino
Pizza
Any-Restaurant
French
Polish
Austrian
German
Portugese
Balkan
Greek
Russian
Barbeque
Grill
Sandwich
Belgian
Hawaiian
Scandinavian
Bistro
Hungarian
Seafood
Bohemian
Ice Cream
South American
Brew Pub
Indian
Sotheast Asian
British
Indonesian
Southwestern
Cajun
International
Spanish
Californian
Italian
Steak-House
Canadian
Japanese
Surinamese
Chines
Korean
Swiss
Coffee
Jewish or Kosher
Thai
Continental
Latin American
Turkish
Dutch
Maltese
Vegetarian
East-European
Mexican
Vietnamese
Because I found it interesting
The Maps in this unit and the Points of Interest come from NAVTEQ a third party mapping company. So I looked them up and this is what they say about themselves.
[Navteq is]a world leader in premium-quality digital map data. You'll find NAVTEQ data onboard most in-vehicle navigation systems sold in North America and Europe. It's also the driving force behind a new generation of important navigation services, including: Internet websites, Enterprise/Fleet/GIS solutions and Location Based Services (LBS).
For hundreds of applications around the world, NAVTEQ digital map data is the data of choice. Manufacturers, application engineers, product developers, and consumers know NAVTEQ on Board means data that is precise, robust, detailed, and reliable.
NAVTEQ's digital map database is like no other, because it's built on the roads of the world with precision. Each day, hundreds of our highly trained field researchers drive and re-drive highways, streets, alleys and rural roads. Armed with a high level of training and our proprietary collection technology, they build a database from a driver's view. And it's built to a single global standard.
NAVTEQ digital map data doesn't just feature road geometry. It contains dozens of road attributes for every kilometer, everything from speed restrictions to lane configurations - in more than 40 countries. And it also offers developers and users millions of Points of Interest, so it enables turn-by-turn directions to restaurants, fuel stations, shopping and more.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jckatz
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Member: Joe Katz
Location: chicago
Reviews written: 153
Trusted by: 73 members
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