Tomtom Pocket Pc Mio 168
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Photograph: Rick RiznerThe Mio 168 aims to be not only your personal digital assistant but also your personal navigator-it comes with a GPS receiver, a little flip-up paddle mounted on its back. But while navigation seems like an ideal use for a PDA, the Mio 168 is not the ideal implementation.Three of the four buttons on the front bezel are preset to run parts of the Mio Map navigation system. One shows you the status of your satellite signal, one lets you choose your destination and see your route, and one lets you browse for points of interest and get directions to them. It's rather startling to press a button labeled with a calendar icon and have the mapping application open up-if you're expecting the device to work like a traditional Pocket PC and launch typical PIM applications. You can, however, remap the buttons to open the applications you choose from the System Settings, as with any Pocket PC.The paper manual isn't any help with the confusing buttons.
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In fact, it consists of little more than the canned information about the Windows Mobile 2003 operating system and its apps that can be found in any Pocket PC manual. The CD that contains ActiveSync 3.7 and Outlook 2002, required to run any Pocket PC, does not provide any additional documentation, just links to downloadable extra apps. There is reasonably complete on-screen help for Mio Map on the PDA itself, as well as documentation on the first of the two included Mio Map CDs, but the diagrams in the PDF-based Mio Map manual did not match the hardware I received for review. While my test unit's buttons had icons for the typical datebook, contacts, and to-dos, the manual's illustration showed buttons labeled for the GPS navigation applications.Every time you start the Mio Map application, a dialog box pops up, requiring you to agree that it should not be used by someone who is driving. This is a little annoying-you should be able to turn off the warning after the first time. It took about 3 minutes of standing in an open spot outdoors to get strong enough satellite signals to be able to use the GPS, though in my experience, GPS units typically lock onto signals more quickly than that. And the Mio Map interface is not as easy to use as it could be-several times I found myself inadvertently quitting the application when I was trying to enter a command.
Tomtom Pocket Pc Mio 168 1
Loading maps or segments of them onto the Mio from the supplied CDs isn't difficult, but it's slow and cumbersome. The files are large, so they usually need to be loaded on an SD card rather than into the Mio's 64MB of internal memory.The Mio 168 hardware was also annoying in several small ways that added up to an overall negative impression: The headphone jack is too small for standard-size stereo headphones; a set that fits (and provides adequate audio) is included with the Mio, but if you have a favorite, great-sounding pair, you won't be able to use them with this PDA, unless you can find an adapter. And the speaker sounds tinny and very crackly. Unlike most Pocket PCs, the Mio doesn't use Windows Media Player for playing MP3s. The supplied MP3 player has 18 equalizer presets for different styles of music, which enhances the sound only somewhat. More troubling is that system volume is pretty insensitive-either loud or off. The MP3 player also has a Screen Toggle command that makes the screen go completely dark, presumably to save battery power when you're just playing music.
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Pressing the power button turns the screen back on. When I switched from the MP3 player to another screen to initiate a second task, the sound popped and jumped.In addition, E-Viewer, the Mio 168's photo and movie viewer, opens and manipulates files extremely sluggishly. It even hesitated while navigating through a list of files. Although the Mio's screen could be brighter and its colors richer, the details in photos looked reasonably smooth, without excessive jaggies. Curiously, when I tried to rotate a photo, I consistently got an error message: 'Memory allocation failed'-but when I checked on the amount of memory allocated to running programs, it was almost 30MB, which seemed like plenty.People who need both a PDA and a GPS unit would do well to find another solution, because the Mio 168 doesn't perform either function satisfactorily.