Sunday, November 23, 2008

GPS in Fujitsu U820 - Road Trip

I went on a little road trip the other day. This is the first real outing other than around town using the GPS in the Fujitsu U820. Before I headed out I printed off directions using Google Maps. While driving I made note of road signs, mile markers, etc. every time they GPS gave me a voice alert. First off I will say the directions that Google gave me vs. the GPS were dead on. They were EXACT! Very interesting I thought. As I drove and I was given voice alerts and looking at the screen to show were I was was pretty accurate. There were a few cases where it showed me coming up to a road after I passed it. A little delay there. The one thing I noticed most was it's accuracy when it said to "stay left in 1 mile". There was a road sign that said the road was splitting in 1 mile. And when it said to Exit in 2 miles the mile marker showed 2 miles. The GPS all in all is pretty accurate it seems and the voice alerts are timed well for the most part. The Garmin Mobile PC software seems to work great, has a nice user interface and is easy to navigate. Especially when you have to while driving. I do not suggest trying to play with it while driving for safety reasons and the software warns you of that every time you fire it up. I give the GPS two thumbs up! I think the GPS is the biggest improvement over the U810 and will probably be one of it's biggest selling features.

3 comments:

roginlatro said...

Hi Tim,

How well does the GPS work without the external antenna ?

I wouldn't like to carry that blob! :-)

Any pictures on the net that shows the internal GPS antenna ?

Anonymous said...

According to some of the other information I've found on the web, the U2010 had what looked like a SIM card slot that wasn't hooked up. Considering the U820 should be coming out in Q1 2009 with 3G support, does the SIM card slot look usable? And does it look like it's hooked up to the PCI-E slot that normally has the GPS card in it (I assume that the PCI-E slot is hooked up to the antenna, which would also be used for 3G)?

TBomb said...

I need your help since I can't get it from Fuji US or JP. I have the U2010 and need the wifi and GPS found on the US model. If you could take a picture of both modules I would greatly appreciate it. The GPS is under the keyboard (not the small skinny module that's bluetooth) and the wifi is the quarter size mini PCI-I above the hard drive (between battery and drive) you can send it to me at tbomely at yahoo dot com