Reviews Written by Philip

Great value for money

Pros: Bang-for-the-buck, Compactflash expandable memory

Cons: No routing, sometimes slow satelite aquisition, forgets odometer when powered off.

The Galileo can't be beaten for the price, offering all the normal location features, breadcrumb trails, routes, compass, etc., plus mapping capabilities.

The unit I have HAS been beaten. It has been mounted on my motorcycle and cars, taken on boats and up in a sixty year old plane. It has also banged about in my briefcase yet has not missed a beat. A very occasional, unexpected reset was fixed by putting a tiny piece of rubber under the battery mount springs to make them tighter. The rubber plug for the antenna hole fell off at some point and it let in some moisture when riding through torrential rain for hours. Nothing that a few hours sitting on top of a computer monitor couldn't cure and no ill-results have been noted from this incident.

The use of standard rechargeable batteries let to the above-noted problem under conditions of severe vibration but also meant it was easy to keep spare batteries around to counter the short battery life. A car power supply not only eliminated the problem but can keep a set of NiMh rechargeable batteries topped up while they are in the unit. Great so you don't lose satelite lock whn you stop somewhere and turn off the ignition.

I have the software and USB download cable, which works, as advertized but is really just a USB to serial adapter so you still have to contend with slow serial transfers. However, the excellent compactflash system means that I can upload maps to compactflash cards using a card-reader and can even keep a spare card with alternate maps for places I travel frequently - a great way to re-use old flashcards that are too small for my digital camera.

I thought the PC map software was clunky and rather poorly thought-out, but it does the job of loading up maps just fine. It would be nice to have a better display of downloaded track data, etc., and the ability to save or print maps - but I have looked at other companies' offerings and they are al weak in this regard.

The Galileo GPS-100/200 is made by a Taiwanese company and a very similar version is sold by Alan-Electronics in Europe. The maps for the European unit are the sanme format and can be used in the Galileo. Alan have hacked a new firmware with additional features but there may be slight differences in the units such that it won't work in the Galileo - probably only uses metric units anyway.

My biggest gripes? Well, the Galileo displays roads but does not understand them, hence it can not give you road directions. In fairness, that is a pretty advanced feature not found in any competing GPS units either. The Galileio will still route point-to-point if you place the points in suitable places on a map beforehand but it is a tedious process to lay out a route in this manner. Secondly, the Galileo has only one trip-meter/odometer and this resets to zero any time the unit is powered off, making it close to useless for any long journey. Finally, if you leave the Galileo turned off for more than a few days, it can take an hour or two to find satelite signals and work out its new position. I am guessing that it "wakes up" thinking it is at zero-zero (i.e on the prime meridian and equator). Don't know if other GPS's have this problem but it seems like a simple change to the search algorithms would cure it easily.

Overall, a useful, inexpensive and reliable GPS unit, with some nice features and a few flaws but no really major shortcomings. ...