Customer Reviews
received an used item with defect 
2007-12-22
Well, I received a used open box item with defect from Amazon. It will go back to Amazon tomorrow.
Nice pocket Pc 
2007-08-31
This is a good value for the money. I bought mine about a month ago and so far I have no complaints.
Only 4 months, the BT-GPS went dead 
2007-05-08
I've got the WP205 with a Bluetooth GPS. The GPS couldn't communicate with the PDA after used only for 4 months. During use, the PDA got freezed frequently. Sometimes, even the SD card couldn't be read. It only support an SD card up to 1G. Also be reminded that you got only 90 days warranties, not one year.
Really Good Product But PDA/GPS Technology Has Not Yet Mature 
2007-04-30
The version that I got is Waypoint 205 (aka Waypoint 200 national edition). In my opinion, this PDA + GPS (or rather GPS + PDA) is probably the best in its class. However, its price range may put it on a not so competitive edge against other similar products. The reason I gave it only 3 stars is not because of the way the product was built but because I don't think that the PDA + GPS combined technology has matured to the point that makes this product useful for every one. In fact, if you are not a techie, you might find your experience in configuring this product for your own use frustrating.
As a PDA ...
It runs Windows CE and allows you to sync with Outlook via ActiveSync. Note that this unit comes with a fully featured Bluetooth adaptor but IT DOES NOT COME WITH A WIRELESS ADAPTOR (unlike most other PDAs/Pocket PCs priced half as much). So if you want to browse the internet at a cafe/airport/hotpoint, you will need to buy a wireless compactflash. Since the Bluetooth connection is indepensible (that is how this PDA communicates with the bluetooth GPS reciever), you probably would want to shop for one compactflash card that supports both Bluetooth & Wifi connections. There are very few manufacturers that make an adaptor for both of these wireless technologies. And when you do find one (see Ambicon for example), it may not work well. So chances are you will need to buy another wireless compactflash and take it with you whereever you go. This is not an actractive option, is it?
As a handheld GPS ...
This is what the product is marketed for (i.e., mainly as a hand held GPS). Its navigational accuracy is quite good. In addition, it comes with a well thought out auto gadget set that you will find it indispensible when you use the unit inside a car. It does a pretty good job of finding routes and will quickly detects that you've missed a turn and re-computes a new route/detour without requiring any manual interaction. Since it comes with a Bluetooth GPS receiver, the receiver can be mounted remotely from the unit to allow for better sattelite reception.
You can also record your GPS positions. This feature makes unit suitable for off-road use. But with limitted battery power, I don't exactly know how useful this feature can be.
The Waypoint 200/205 has several critical weaknesses that are common to nearly all products in its class. Basically, it is a complex computer with complex navigational software running on very limitted harware resources. These problems make this type of product better suited for techies and not for every one.
1. As mentioned above, this unit does not come with a wireless connection
2. Plan to spend many frustrating hours if you want to run ActiveSync on this unit via the Bluetooth connection. Mobile Crossing has a web page especially for this feature. But it is not of much help. There is an expert review on the web specifically mentioning his frustration in getting this feature to work. It took him 30 minutes to figure out how to use this features. Well, it took me about 1 day to get this feature to work.
3. The unit is not reliable. You will need to frequently soft resetting your unit. In some cases, soft resetting won't solve the problems. For example, you may find the unit automatically turns off the backlight when you tap on the screen and soft resetting does not solve this problem. In these cases, you will need to take the battery out to perform a hard/cold reset. This kind of reset will erase all software you've downloaded and your own customed configurations. Basically, you should always back up the data on your PDA to your PC or Laptop. The unit is just not reliable enough to function standalone.
4. Unlike the expensive GPS unit that comes with your car, the Bluetooth GPS will take about 1 minute (or much longer in some cases) to sync with the sattelites if you only turn it on sporadically. This wait can be taxing on your patience
5. Be careful if you decide to use the business locations that come with the detailed maps. They are accurate most of the time. But a good fraction of the times, it will direct you to go to a place that is a few miles away from the actual business address. Because of this problem, a could be very useful feature is of limitted utility. If you don't want to get lost, I recommend that you always look up the destination address on the web and use that for navigation.
6. The unit is really practical for 1 or at most 2 region maps loaded. Any more than that will make the unit extremely unresponsive. Loading the maps of 3 or more regions may even crash your Waypoint. Furthermore, you really have to be a techie and have a lot of patience to go through the map downloading instructions. The national edition allows you to have access to all US region maps. But it does not come with all of these maps installed. All US maps will fit into a 1GB compactflash card. You can buy this card from Mobile Crossing or you can build the card yourself. In either case, here is another card that you will need to carry with you whenever you travel.
7. At the time of this writing, Mobile Crossing map availability is limitted US, Canada, and UK. iQUE product has significantly more maps of other countries.
8. According to Mobile Crossing, the battery is specially made for the product. If you need an extra battery for your PDA, Mobile Crossing will direct you to their outlet. The battery alone costs about $60. I have not been able to find any other alternative.
Mobile Crossing tech support is better than most other companies. It is probably because they are still a small company whose products (though quite good in their classes) have not been widely adopted. I have contacted their tech support a few times. In most cases, they can diagnose the issues quickly. I would not be surprised if a significant portion of the cost of product goes to tech support.
The GPS/PDA combined product is a such a good concept. It fits the use profile of most of us. We only need to use the navigation feature on the average may be once a week or when we travel. For the rest of the time, we can use the unit as a full-featured PDA. But because of limitted computational power, memory, and reliability of the software, one needs to think twice before buying this product.
If your need is just for your own local area/state/region, the regional release of this product is probably what you want. You won't need to configure your unit since it is shipped with the map for your region (i.e., it is ready for use out of the box). However, if you need to use more than one region (as most of these units are national editions), you will need to ask yourself the following two questions:
Are you a techie?
Do you derive pleasure from figuring out how things work?
If you answer no to either question, your need for a mobile hand help GPS must be extremely great before buying this product or any other product in the same class. You might want to consider buying a PDA unit and a separate navigational unit. In my assessment, tt is still at least a few years away before we see a PDA/GPS product that can overcome most of the weaknesses mentioned here.
Good for the price 
2007-01-26
I gave it four stars mainly because the software does not have an easy way to do multi-stop routing. Since I am a real estate agent that is important to me, but may not be for other users.
It does a very good job of leading you to your destination, however, it may not pick the best route. I live and work in Seattle, and nearly all of my routing is on city streets. As with most map software, it picks the most direct route, which may have you trying to cross busy streets at intersections without a traffic light. On the other hannd, if you decide to take a different route as you are driving, it continually updates and re-routes as you make changes. It says to you "re-routing", and then tells you the next turn to make - even if you really deviated from the route and got on the freeway - it gave me the correct ramp to take within seconds.
The product ships with everything you need - it is extremely well thought out, although the gooseneck suction mount is kind of cumbersome and takes up a lot of space in your window. I decided to modify the set-up. Since the Bluetooth GPS receiver holds an 8 hour charge, I decided to forego the power hookup on the mount, and use the provided velcro to stick it on my dash which has a better view of the sky for the satelites. I then removed the receiver bracket from the gooseneck to make it cleaner. I have a Ford Explorer, and it has cup holders in the center console - the cupholders are fitted with flexible plastic inserts to make them easy to clean. I tried fitting the suction cup in the cupholder, and the location was perfect - close enought to see well, and fiddle with while stoped at a light or pulled over. The suction cup would not hold in the plastic cup liner, so I pulled it off and used Marine Goo glue to glue it in the cup holder liner. What is really nice is that I can just lift the whole thing out and either take it in the house or put it in the center console or glove compartment - that way it is out of the way when not in use, and thieves can't see you have the system.
The unit comes with Microsoft ActiveSync for linking with your PC, and you can download maps and software from the internet and transfer them to the WayPoint. Activesync also allows you to download and synchronize your Outlook contacts and schedules. It allows you to specify a contact category to sync which is how I do a work-around for multi-stop routing. I cut and paste addresses from the MLS to Outlook contacts and name them a specific category and number them in the order I want to see them. As it turns out, the quickest way to set up a route is to choose the "Find Contact" option, and since I number them, they come up in order in the contact list. Then I just click on the number when I am leaving for the next stop. When finished, delete them from Outlook, and when syncing, they get erased from the Waypoint.
It is also a full featured PDA with a Blue Tooth transceiver, so there is no limit to the accessories you can add; such as a cell-phone with internet access, and many other things. The screen is bright, and it works well as a PDA. When you compare this package to a Nuvee, I think it blows it away, and all for $299.
Mobile Crossings WP200 Review 2008-06-15
The Mobile Crossings WP200 GPS can be a bit difficult to set up it you do not have experience with mobile devices. With a little trial and error you can figure it out. As a GPS goes the screen size is comfortable. The PDA is simular to the HP 6300 in that it has the outdated Windows mobile 2003. Which is impossible to upgrade to Windows Mobile 5 or 6. To use it with Windows Vista,you need to download some software. I like the PDA because it can hold other valuable information, games, and software, although it is light and has a cheap feel to it. The size and shape resembles many of the HP PDA's, but the resemblence ends there. The bluetooh GPS allows the PDA to be passed around inside the vehicle. The maps provided by Mobile Crossings are out dated. If you live in an area that did not exist five years ago, your home address will not work for a destination or starting point. The customer service seems to be non-existant, I have tried to contact them on several occasions and no return emails. I read somewhere that Mobile Crossings is going out of business. This may be true with all of the smartphones out there with GPS. All in all I would reccomend the Mobile Crossings PDA to people that really enjoy learning about PDA's and GPS systems. If you do purchasd one of these units I reccomend you get extra batteries, and the globalsat gps with flash.
Couldn't get GPS working 2008-01-27
Keep getting errors and when it works does not show my address in my regional map :(
It's a great entry level gps/ pocket pc on sale... 2008-01-27
My first impression of the gps was that it seemed sturdy out of the package and the equipment wasn't too overwhelming but made sense. The set up was a little tricky because you had to do this update in order to get your maps uploaded. Be real careful because it requests you to hit yes for an update and it's like a three second window, otherwise you have to restart the whole update process and then you can sync your gps. Once you get the maps on it is pretty straight forward... you have a lot of customizing and I will note that the text to speech function is there, meaning it dictates street names but only with the text to speech voice. It is decent but the interface isn't nearly as friendly as the garmin gps but it does also have the navteq which is supposed to be better than the teleatlas, (ie. tom tom)
Pros: Attractive design, bluetooth, windows, real text to speech
Cons: Bit cumbersome, needs to be updated to begin, windows, garbled speech at times.
All in all, for below retail, the range of the gps is great due to waas and bluetooth. Compared it to the routing of the garmin m5 and it seemed to have picked up a signal quicker and took the same route! Great entry level!
Good ppc with an old GPS navigation software 2008-01-20
If you are buying it only for GPS, this might be not the one you are looking for. Its GPS map is quite out of date, and there are accurate points of interest (POI) with the software. But for the price, it's unbeatable
Just received mine this week...so far very satisfied 2007-12-28
I bought this unit for its PDA features...I already have a top of the line GPS unit so i will not use the GPS features on this...For $[...] after rebate, this is an amazing deal. I have only used the PDA/organizer so i cannot speak about the GPS/navigation abilities of this device; however I am quite impressed with the mobile crossing 200 device so far. This has more than everything I need to keep me organized in the office. The documentation and instructions were a little confusing and the multiple cords in the box also made things a little complex; however, with some patience I figured out how to use this device... Also, the mobile crossings website is still up and running..be sure to check out their forums for advice on how to best use this product. I heard that the company went out of business, so I'm not sure how much longer their website will be operational. Anyway, if you are looking for a great PDA device, give this unit a try!
UPDATE:!!
I am attempting to fill out the $50 rebate on this product. The rebate form indicates that they want a "copy of your original UPC Label cut from the package." This implies to me that they want a photocopy of the original. Am I correct? However, when you read the terms and conditions at the bottom of the page, it says "Photocopies of UPC will be accepted." This is clearly a deceptive business practice and is meant to confuse the average customer. I hope that Amazon.com does not stoop to such lows as to deliberately try to confuse its customers so they won't get their rebate money. For those of you who are denied their rebates, you should file a complaint with the attorney generals office regarding these deceptive business practices..
Update: 2/11/07: Rebate Status: I got a notice back in the mail saying that the barcode that I sent was not the UPC symbol. Unfortunately, I sent the only barcode that came with the package. Why does Amazon.com like to deceive its customers. I will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and attorney generals office. Fraud is not cool!THis is BS!
