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>I recently bought a Mio268, and used it on a touring holiday in the
> Telford (UK) area.
>
> In general, the unit works well.
>
> It generally picks up GPS signals without needing the external antenna.
> I have a Citroen Picasso, with heat reflective screen, which used to
> make my Garmin III virtually blind (unless putting the antennal up
> behind the rear view mirror).
>
> The routing instructions are generally fairly accurate,though do suffer
> from a number of MAJOR problems.
>
> 1]
> The instructions are generally made up from a number of stock words or
> phrases,road numbers for example A417 would be broken down into "A" "4"
> "17". Most times, the phrases would be spoken without any delay, other
> times there would be noticable delays of anything up to 5 seconds (yes
> FIVE) such that the road number would come out as "A""4".........."17".
> This is rather frustrating, as you have to stop and listen to the
> message to try to ensure that you heard it correctly.
> This delay can also result in the request to turn occuring late (after
> the turn point has been passed.
>
> 2]
> Some instructions are confused. For example BEAR RIGHT when in fact the
> instruction should have been TURN RIGHT AT THE JUNCTION.
> Various times requests are made to BEAR LEFT/RIGHT when the road is
> straight!
>
> Entering target locations is sometimes less than straight forward. The
> unit does not accept FULL post codes, you have to enter all but the
> last two characters for the post code, this will then give a list of
> possible areas, you then need to select the closest area, then find the
> required road. Sometimes there were errors in the mapping data,
> preventing the correctroad from being selected.
> Also the POI's were not always easy to find. On several occasions,I
> searched for a POI without finding it, then resorted to using the MAP
> display to locate where I wanted to go,and then found that my target
> was actually already listed as a POI, but was not spelt how I expected,
> or was spelt how I expected,but did not show up as NEAR TO a nearby
> town (again I guess this is a database problem).
>
> The unit like many does not accept OSGB grid references, so if you have
> a National Trust members book,you can not use the OSGB ref to set a
> target, also you often can not use the postcode, as itis not always the
> address of the place, but it's admin. office.
>
> Strangely the unit can not easily route you to heathrow central bus
> station (terminal 1,2,3) even though there appear to be a number of
> POI's for it. I did eventually find a location that it could navigate
> too. But once at Heathrow, the unit could not route me back home, as it
> considered that I was in an UNROUTABLE location, so I had to drive
> blind for a while before the unit finally accepted that it could find a
> route.
>
> Also the unit is not a PDA (Pocket PC) so you can not run your own
> applications on it.
> Though if you have Microsoft EVC and a suitable SDK, you could probably
> use a backdoor method to replace the installable CONTACTS application
> with your own application, though getting the SDK inthe first place
> would be difficult.
>
> The MITAC web site has a FAQ section, and an option to submit your own
> questions, though there appears to be no response from MITAC to any of
> the questions that I have posted 3 weeks ago.
>
> The 268 is a good self contained unit, having inbuilt antenna, so is
> useful for hand held use. Possibly as a tourist round London? Though I
> do not know how good it would be for pedestrians, as I guess the
> database is onlt of roads,and not footpaths.
> Also the battery life is only 4 hours, so for a day out, you would need
> to keep switching the unit OFF while you walked, otherwise you will get
> lost after 4 hours!
>
> You also do not appear to be able to add any custom POI's, only save
> your own target destinations. Though you do not appear to be able to
> back these up on you desktop.
>
> I had a few occasions where a hard reset was needed, as the routing
> phase got stuck in a loop and never exited. This requires about 5
> minutes to reset and reinstal the application (all done fromthe SD
> card, so can be done without the need of a desktopPC).
>

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>
> The MITAC web site has a FAQ section, and an option to submit your own
> questions, though there appears to be no response from MITAC to any of
> the questions that I have posted 3 weeks ago.