Memory-Map

Memory-Map Review

Supplier: EVO Distribution
Product: Memory-Map
Version: 5.06
Cost: £25 - £300 (depending on package)
Tested on: XDA Mini S with Socket Bluetooth GPS
Product Web Site: EVO Memory-Map

Memory-Map is a piece of software that allows you to plot and follow routes off-road using GPS and to track your current progress. It works on a Windows Desktop PC as well as a Windows Mobile device; either PPC or Smartphone (PPC Edition reviewed here).

Thanks to Wendy Miles at EVO Distribution for checking through this review for errors and omissions.

For your delectation all non-ppc screen-shots are thumbnails which may be clicked on to load an image.

Introduction

Firstly, what isn't Memory-Map. Well, Memory-Map is not an alternative to the likes of TomTom. You cannot just ask it to get you to the nearest Hotel and then let it provide you with spoken, step by step instructions on how best to drive through the centre of London. That isn't what it is designed for.

So what is it designed to do? Well, have you ever used a guide book and an OS map and tried to follow a footpath, only to realise that you have gone completely the wrong way and now need to either re-trace your steps or (if you're like me) try to leap gorges, cross rivers; anything to get back on track without going backwards? Or have you ever completed a walk and wondered how far you have walked or how high that climb really was? Well, this is what Memory-Map does, along with quite a lot else.

If you are into walking, you may have already seen Memory-Map. It is often in the OS Map section of walking and outdoorsy shops in a DVD-style case. It is available in lots of different versions but it basically comes down to;

The software itself

The OS Maps

The version I used during my review is called "Memory-Map OS Landranger Premium Region - Northern England – Region 4 Standard" and, as well as the software, it comes with 1:50,000 OS maps covering the North of England and the Isle of Man. It costs around £50. There are versions for the whole of the British Isles as well as special packs such as one covering all the National Parks.

Version Being Reviewed

Just before I start I should probably point out that Memory-Map is a huge suite of products. There are 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 maps. There are products covering each region of the UK or the whole of the UK. There are products covering individual walks such as the Pennine way. Some products come with detailed aerial photography ala Goole-earth. Then there is Europe, the rest of the World, Maritime Charts etc. etc. etc. Were I to try to cover all permutations and review them thoroughly I'd be here until at least Christmas and you'd get bored long before the end. The table to the left shows just the 1:50,000 Landranger walking maps for the UK.
So, what I have done is to purchase the Region 4 package and use it for a few walks around where I live and a walking holiday in the Lake District. I'd consider this to be fairly typical usage and it should give you an idea of what the software is capable of but please bare in mind the options are enormous.

Installation and Setup

Right, well, now that I've covered myself, lets get going with the installation. This is a cinch. I connected the MiniS to my PC via the USB cable and whacked the install CD into the CD drive. Then I just followed the on-screen instructions. After installing the software, it asked if I wanted to install the maps. I said yes and it went ahead and installed them, asking me to insert the CD with the maps on. When you start it for the first time you can choose to register it (registration card with codes included in the box) and you are ready to go.

I hooked up my GPS unit to my PC via Bluetooth just to get an idea of how it worked and it was just as easy, taking about a minute.

There are several menus across the top of the screen but the one that leaps out to me is "Mobile Device". Under this, the first option is called "Install Pocket Navigator" so I click it. Up pops the standard Windows Mobile installation screen and a few seconds later I am asked to check my mobile device. Sure enough, it is asking if I want to install to Main Memory or Memory Card. Erm...Memory Card please. I get the feeling this could be big!

Getting Started

Right, I'm an impatient bloke and prefer to figure things out myself so, ignoring the manual for now, I decide to try this thing out. There is a walk up in the hills immediately behind my house and I'd always wondered how long it was so, lets see if I can find out.

Ignoring the Mini S for a moment, I turn to the PC. At the moment there is just a large area of blank space where I assume a map should be displayed so I click on the "Map" menu and select "Map List". This brings up a huge list of maps such as "1:250K GB Road Atlas" along with the size of the map and grid references for the areas they cover.

I quickly look at the sizes and see that, whilst most are a few k or a few meg, one is 668MB and called "OS 1:50K Region 4". That sounds like the one so I load it up and, sure enough, up pops a map of the north of England. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that you can move around by clicking and dragging, or zoom in and out with the scroll wheel.

Plotting My First Walk

Above the map is a bar of icons, one of which is called route so I click it and then click at the start of the walk. A little blue marker appears on the screen. So, I click a bit further along the route and another marker appears along with a thin blue line connecting them. Nice. Apparently these little blue markers are called "Waypoints" (terminology that should be familiar to any users of GPS kit). They record the GPS location of a point on the map and, by linking them to another point on the map, they also record the distance and compass bearing to that point. By linking lots of these together, you get a Route. So, some more clicking and I have a nice blue line following the walk pretty accurately using about 30 markers.

Now, if I right-click on the route and choose properties it tells me my walk is 6.63 Miles long and has a total ascent of 1132ft. If I click "View Route" up pops a browser with a profile of the walk, distances and bearings to each Waypoint and a section of the OS map that includes the walk. I can print this out and take it with me. It also tells me it reckons the walk should take 2 hours and 29 minutes. Brilliant!

The PPC Software

So, how can I use my Mini S to follow the walk? Well, on the right-click menu was an "Operations" sub menu. A quick skim through this reveals a menu option called "Send Enclosed Map to Mobile Device" so I click it. A box pops up showing a progress bar and a few seconds later it is done. So, time to fire up the Mini S!

There is a new icon under Programs on the Mini S called "Pocket Nav OS 5" so I start this up and wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually the program starts. Not good. The Mini S is notorious for being under powered. Is it not going to be powerful enough for a heavy Duty mapping application?

Well, the screen is blank like the PC one was. First impression is that this software is not WM5 specific. It doesn't use the soft keys and the look and feel is very much 2003SE. So, two causes for concern. However, ploughing on, I tap the main menu and there is an item called "Map..." so I tap it. Up pops a familiar looking map list but with just one map called "From OS 1:50k Region 4". I tap this an an OS map instantly pops up showing the area behind my house and with my walk plotted in the familiar blue. That was seriously fast.

I later discovered that, at the time I exported the route and map from the PC to my MiniS I could have renamed the Map to something more useful than the default ("From "). But all of that is covered in the manual and can be learned once you've had fun finding stuff out for yourself.

Continued...

Just like on the PC version, tap and drag moves the map around. For zooming in and out there are a couple of fairly obvious icons on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. In every case the redraw takes less then a second. I can zoom right in on some of the Waypoints and see that I hadn't quite put them in the right place when I had plotted it. No problem, tap and drag the Waypoint to where it should be. Excellent.

A nice touch is that, in order to maximise the screen space available, the default PPC toolbar at the top of the screen is hidden by default.

Now, before I set off I'd better let the software know about my GPS unit. It is a "Socket" Bluetooth unit that came in a package with my road navigation software so it is all set up on the device. In the end, I just have to tell my "Pocket Memory-Map" software what Com port it uses and it finds it. Tapping the Blue "information" icon at the bottom right brings up a fairly standard satellite screen telling me what kind of a signal I'm getting and what satellites are in range. All well and good but of no interest to me. As long as I'm getting a signal I'm happy.

Following a Route

Now, if I tap and hold on the route, a context menu pops up and the first option I see is "Follow Route" so I choose that.

Immediately, two boxes open up on the screen over the top of the map. One is a small square box that contains an arrow pointing away to my right (the direction of the start of the walk!). The other tells me that I need to tap to choose what information to display. So, I tap in the box and a menu pops up giving me a list of things it can tell me. Current speed, direction and distance to Waypoint. Est. time to Waypoint. Total distance remaining. Est. time remaining plus a few others.

I ask it to display Speed, distance remaining and time remaining and set off with Mini S in hand and the GPS unit in the top of my rucksack. I now notice a red cross-hair on the map representing me and a red arrow coming out of it. This tells me the direction I'm moving in and, if I speed up or slow down the arrow gets longer or shorter. It seems to indicate where I'll be in about five minutes if I continue at this pace and on this bearing.

As I reach the start of the walk I see the next Waypoint changes and my remaining distance to the next point leaps from 50ft to 0.3Miles. The arrow in the box is also now pointing off to the right which is where the path heads and the red cross hair is flashing at the first Waypoint. A bit of tidying is needed to be able to see the info box, the arrow and the bit of the map I currently need to view but that's all easy enough. Click in the grey bottom corner of each box allows me to resize them and both the arrow and the font of the text re-size auto-magically to best fit the size of box you want. Nice touch!

It occurs to me that a VGA device would probably do a better job of displaying it all at once but, after resizing the boxes and moving them around a bit, everything fits and is perfectly useable.

Navigating

So, I continue on my walk which starts straight up a very big hill before cutting back across a ridge. It's always tricky finding the point at which it cuts back as five different paths meet at the same place and today the cloud is very (very!) low and visibility isn't great. Still, no problem. I refer to the MiniS and the arrow tells me which path to take. You do have to be moving to get a decent reading I notice, but that isn't a problem. There is also the exact bearing to follow if you are comfortable using a compass (but that defeats the whole point of having a GPS system, surely?

)

The Wrong Path

I try taking the wrong path and, sure enough, after only a dozen paces it becomes very obvious I am off my plotted walk as the arrow is pointing off to my left rather than straight ahead, and my speed, which is calculated as a vector relative to the next Waypoint, has dropped right down to less than 2mph from a previously steady 4mph. So, I re-trace my steps and set off along the path it is clearly telling me I should take and all the figures start making sense again.

I come down off the hill and start making my way back along the road to home. I had plotted a route that took me onto an old railway line back into the village but, to see if I could confuse it, I decide to stick to the road for half a mile or so. Sure enough, it gets it's knickers in a twist. I am now doing -ve 3Mph and, according to this, my ETA is now some time tomorrow (I only have two miles to go!). However, a minute or so later, it has decided I am not heading to that Waypoint, but must be making my way to the one after that and things look a bit more sensible (though still not right as I am on the wrong path).

As I eventually walk up a track towards the railway line and my original route, everything looks normal. I have about 25 minutes to go and all is well.

Routes and Tracks

When I get home and look at the screen without the clutter of the boxes I notice a thin red line on the screen that follows the exact route I took, mistakes and all. Tapping on this allows me to pull up a "Speed" and an "Elevation" profile. Placing these one above the other I can quickly see that, fairly reasonably, I was going much slower up the hill than I was along the nice flat railway line. I can also see that I actually walked just over 7 miles and that it took 2 hours 3 mins at an average speed of around 3.5 mph.

It turns out that these are Tracks. So, I can create routes to follow, but the device can create Tracks by tracking my progress based on the GPS data and the OS elevation data.

Export to PC

So, back to the PC and, once connected, from the "Mobile Device" menu, I can import data from the MiniS. So, now I have the red track data on my screen and I can see in detail the track I followed (including the "mistakes"). If I right-click on the track I can name it something useful and save it away. I can even upload it to a website for others to download and follow.

Talking of which, there are masses of routes and tracks created by other users on the web that you can download a follow. Some (you have to buy) even include additional data such as photo's and notes taken at the Waypoints. Which reminds me...

Waypoint Data

As well as Waypoints containing data such as the location and elevation, you can also associate files with them. Any file. If you discover that, rather than leap across a stream, it is easier to head further down the track where there are stepping stones, you can take a photo, make some notes and associate those with the Waypoint as a reminder. Or, if you plan to upload your route for others to follow, it can prove a useful way of adding additional information to help them follow your walk

It's not a feature I used much myself, but I did download some walks from the internet and those that had made use of it had produced some amazingly detailed walks with photo's, text notes, line drawings and all sorts of other extra bits and pieces to ensure that, even a complete idiot couldn't possibly get lost.

Power

After my little two hour walk I still had over 90% of the charge left in my MiniS. I suspected this wasn't being completely accurately reported. However, after a six hour walk in the Lakes during which I sent a lot of texts and taking a few photo's and a further two hours before I returned home, I still had a fairly safe 30% charge remaining. Better than I was expecting.

So, unless you are heading out to complete the Pennine Way in one go, battery power shouldn't be a problem. Or, at least, not on the MiniS.

Help

Whilst I got up and running very quickly without the need to refer to the help files, both the PC and PPC versions come with very good help. They each take you through the main features very thoroughly and have useful tips as well as pointing out any features you may have missed in your eagerness to get up and running (such as giving the PPC map segments more meaningful names!).

Extras

As I was using the software, a few thoughts occurred to me which I thought I might mention. When I go out on a long walk, I always give my wife a plot of the planned route before I go and then I text her every hour or so with an update. It's just a safety thing because I tend to go out on my own for hours at a time (8-10 hours is standard). Memory-Map covers the first base by providing a very useful means of printing out the route to leave a copy behind. However, it occurred to me that, if Memory-Map could integrate with Phone Edition devices, it could automatically send a text at pre-defined intervals, containing my current location, direction of travel etc.

Also, and this is probably pretty obvious, a device like the new Loox N560 with it's inbuilt GPS and the VGA screen would be perfect for displaying Memory-Map, although it did occur to me that the extra hit on the battery might not be so great.

The PPC version of Memory-Map is very close to the PC version in terms of both the level of functionality available and the way in which things are achieved. Once you have mastered one, you've pretty much mastered the other. The features and menus are very well thought out and most things are pretty intuitive. However, there is one little trick the PC version has up it's sleeve that it's little brother couldn't hope to replicate. 3D Rendering! Having plotted a walk, the software can use the elevation data within the OS maps to render a full 3D view of the walk and can then fly along it. It's quite useful for picking out the really steep bits or the best places from where to get a good view but, apart from it's usefulness, it's just one of the coolest things I've seen in ages.

Qualification

In writing this review I have tried to focus on the points most relevant to the PPC side of things. Setting up a route on the PC and viewing the tracks on the PC afterwards would, I think, be standard activities even for a PPC user so I have included these. However, the PC version contains an enormous amount of functionality. In many cases it is replicated on the PPC but is just more suited to the large screen and keyboard of the PC. In some cases, however, like the 3D rendering and the Internet links, the functionality is exclusive to the PC version. So, please don't think that what I have mentioned here is the absolute extent of the software. It is a huge beast and all I have tried to do is get across how you could use it to plot and follow a route whilst out on a walk or bike ride along with providing a taster or some of the more entertaining features. If this review has whetted your appetite there is a 30-day demo available from the publishers website (link at the top of the review).

Conclusion

I love this application. I'm a big walker and this does all the stuff I need it to plus it offers me a few interesting extras (3D!). If you are into walking or off-road cycling then this is a magnificent addition to your PPC and reminds you exactly why you carry a Windows Mobile device and not a java enabled mobile phone. This stretches your device to it's limits but does so without skipping a beat and is well worth it's 4WinMobile gold medal.

For:-

Unique!

Very fast

Impossible to get lost

View your performance afterwards

Plot routes to get an idea of how long they are and to view the elevation before you walk them.

Copes well with route changes on the fly

Associate files with routes and Waypoints for extra guidance or just memories

Against:-

It's not fully WM5 compliant. Soft-key support would really improve the user experience

Navigation view is crowded on QVGA devices.

Integration with Phone Edition Devices would be handy

4WinMobile rating:- 95%