PSP Go!Explore

[Tod]

Brought this yesterday and I am very happy with my purchase. Argos doing Go!Explore plus disc, car charger, car mount for £99.

Had no problems getting me from home to work!

[Graham M]

Its a bit chunky for a sat nav though wouldn't you say? I think the £99 would have been wiser spent on a Tom Tom One GB v3 surely?

You can't play SOCOM on a TomTom though.

[Acathla]

You can play SOCOM on your PSP whilst your TomTom guides you home though...

Can't play SOCOM whilst your 'navigating'

Of course, it is obviously silly to play SOCOM whilst driving

[Tod]

Originally Posted by Zeph

Its a bit chunky for a sat nav though wouldn't you say? I think the £99 would have been wiser spent on a Tom Tom One GB v3 surely?

Well it could well be argued and a lot of people that could be the better option.

Personally I like the big screen display the PSP gives me, and the fact that I can pop it off the mount and play some FF7 Crisis Core at the end of my journey! I think you are right, Sony could work on the price, but I prefer all in one rather than carting around multiple peripherals all the time.

[eggfoo]

Why are Argos selling this when I have had it on back order from Amazon for what seems like eternity (in reality it's only been just over two months) ... OK, it's only costing me £25.99 but I am tempted to cancel and spend the extra at Argos if it's still available

I have read reports that the start up time is a little slow for the GPS, is this correct?

@ Tod - any issues that you'd like to share with the unit?

[Tod]

Originally Posted by eggfoo

Why are Argos selling this when I have had it on back order from Amazon for what seems like eternity (in reality it's only been just over two months) ... OK, it's only costing me £25.99 but I am tempted to cancel and spend the extra at Argos if it's still available

I have read reports that the start up time is a little slow for the GPS, is this correct?

@ Tod - any issues that you'd like to share with the unit?

Argos are only selling it at their "Extra" stores. Will Amazon sell it for that price? I have my doubts. There were 3 flavours - GPS and disc, GPS disc car kit, gps disc car kit and psp. Maybe the Amazon one will be without the car kit?

Sometimes (not always) it does seem to take a bit of a while to re-establish where it is if you have turned it back on from sleep mode - I will keep you informed on this as I have only had it a couple of days though. If you switch on from off - load the software from UMD, it pretty much locates itself straight away (albeit you have to wait for it to load of course!)

No issues with it yet, works pretty well - even warns you if you are speeding!

[eggfoo]

I suspect that the kit I am purchasing is only the GPS unit and UMD but am not too sure

I have checked with Amazon and they have said that they will honour the price I originally purchased at, I note that currently the option to buy is disabled on Amazon, when I last checked it was available for something like £89.99, this was two weeks ago (ish) but after holidaying in Sri Lanka can't be sure

I have had an email from Amazon saying that delivery has been delayed ... again! This is the third one now ...

Still, if I hold out I might get a bargain.

I'm not surprised that returning from sleep mode takes a while to re-establish location, that makes sense to me, however I'd be interested to know whether loading from the UMD was faster/slower than loading from the memory stick, perhaps that would save battery power?

[Tod]

Originally Posted by eggfoo

I'm not surprised that returning from sleep mode takes a while to re-establish location, that makes sense to me, however I'd be interested to know whether loading from the UMD was faster/slower than loading from the memory stick, perhaps that would save battery power?

I will take the maps and system info off the disc and give it a go this lunchtime, see if there is any noticeable difference.

---------- Post added at 14:29 ---------- Previous post was at 13:04 ----------

After taking the data off the memory card it makes the menu movement slow, however once you are on-route you notice no real difference to the performance. The slow down on the menus however is quite bad when looking through the stored destinations (tourist attractions, restaurants etc).

The system gives you 4 different items you can store on the memory card. For me it is best having maps (approx 150MB) and system data (approx 18MB) so total 168MB. You can opt for 3D buildings (50MB) and additional voices (60mb) to be stored also, but I see little point doing those items.

[eggfoo]

Tod - thanks for that, I'm still looking forward to having mine.

I've been using Tom Tom on a battered XDA IIs with a bluetooth GPS receiver for some time, before that I had Wayfinder on a Nokia 6600 (hence the BT receiver) and way back when, I even used GPS with a laptop in Europe whilst touring on my motorbike.

Suffice to say I think GPS is the best thing since the last best thing and to combine it with another brilliant piece of kit is an excellent idea

Well done, Mr Sony!

[Tod]

One thing I noticed, is that it does take a good 40 seconds or so to locate the satellites when you first put it on, and you have to be stationary until it does. Not sure how that compares to other systems. I said in an earlier post that I thought it was better from off, this is not the case, it is quite happy to start from standby - you just have to keep still for the first locate which I wasn't doing!

[eggfoo]

you just have to keep still for the first locate

I don't like the sound of that, how does it re-route if you deviate from the suggested path? That would be something that could be an issue for me

[Tod]

Originally Posted by eggfoo

I don't like the sound of that, how does it re-route if you deviate from the suggested path? That would be something that could be an issue for me

It is only when you first turn it on, after that it more or less instantly "re-calculates route" if you make a wrong turn etc.

[eggfoo]

In my limited experience of using GPS receivers, it has always been the case that so called 'cold starts' have always had a delay when initially searching for satellites, I have experienced a delay of nigh on three minutes in some scenarios

I'm not overly fussed about the time it takes to locate satellites from said 'cold starts', I'm more concerned with the, shall we say, 'warm starts', where the PSP returns from standby

It would seem from your explanation that there's nothing to worry about, I guess I'll just have to wait until Amazon sort themselves out and see what's what

Is that the BT unit on top? Can you use a separate BT receiver?