P c miler 450

The date and time come from the satellites. You only have to set the time zone. If you do not have a solid GPS signal (like inside of a building) or if you just turned it on, the date and time will not be downloaded yet.

It does not have to be plugged into power on a constant basis. However the battery life is greatly affected by several factors: the biggest are the screen brightness setting and whether you are navigating at the time or sitting still.

 

Time is not telling anything good. Unfortunately it has tried to route me through numerous places a truck does not belong and even some a car does not belong.

After only a couple more weeks I know now that I do not recommend this product.

On paper this is an excellent device with some excellent features. Unfortunately, with the exception of lane assist/clear turn, none of them work as expected. The lane assist/clear turn hasn't come into play that often though and based on the other failures I fully expect it to be wrong in the future.

In my previous post I mentioned some of the things I had found. There are more but I won't bother going into all of them. For me it comes down to one basic thing. One which I took for granted based on my experience with the nuvi 255w I used previously. Location, location, location.

When I first got the garmin I took it home, plugged it in and turned it on. I then tapped on 'where am I' and was amazed to see my own address. With only a couple of exceptions it was flawless in knowing where an address was and I came to rely on that. If it said an address was on a certain side of the street and was a quarter block west of the intersection then I knew that is where it was. Though I was amazed at first with the accuracy I now expect it. If that accuracy can be achieved with a 3 or 4 year old product I don't see why it can't be expected in any new product. A few years is a long time when it comes to technology. Unfortunately the 450 fails badly in that regard. It is often off by hundreds of yards or more. I don't expect a gps to always get me where I am going in the best manner but I do expect it to be able to show me accurately where the destination actually is and this product does not do that.

 

In our testing, the Garmin did indeed more often show a raw address number to be more accurate on the "where am I" screen than the non NavTeq maps units. The Rand is very good at this ability as well.

So if the "where am I location" is what is most important as the buying decision, and not truck routing, then the Garmin is a better choice.

 

Hmm, how should I put it. It's not the where am I, it's the inaccuracy in actually knowing where an address or location is that really disappoints me. The reason I mentioned the 'where am I' is because it was my first experience with gps technology and it was very accurate. I entered many hundreds of addresses into that garmin and with only two exceptions I believe it was accurate to within a distance measured in feet. This unit does not come close in accuracy to the garmin which surprised me quite a bit. I took it for granted it would be the same which was a bad assumption.

But anyway, yes, knowing the actual location of an address is very important. I can easily cross reference the routing with the road atlas and other means but knowing whether the address is west or east of an intersection for example is not as easy.

 

I understand. Though you will see some complaints about the NavTeq maps used in the Rand and the Garmin and the MS Streets and Trips here and there in this forum and elsewhere - in general they have more raw addresses and closer positional accuracy in relation to where it says that address IS than the PCM maps. I agree with you.

 

bought a p.c. miler 540 from love's alittle over a year ago. when i opened the box, there were a few scratches on the unit which i found strange. turns out there were several stored trips on the unit which means it was USED, BUT IN A WRAPPED BOX. took it back into love's and showed the manager, who promptly gave me another one that i opened in front of him. (that one was ok). i've been off the road for a few months and decided to use the unit for a trip we just came back off of. the thing freaked out in new york state. it freaked out and kept showing the same thing over and over after i went against it's advise and turned on a new section of highway and now has a "unable to find image directory" error and is locked up. this after about 3 months of actual use.

it's junk in my opinion. buy anything but a p.c. miler.

yeah, SOMEBODY will have to jump in and tell everyone how lovely theirs is, but the one i have is pure manure. there isn't much about error messages in either the question and answers section of the website, or, nothing in the instruction manuals. i'm sure someone will be more than glad to fix the thing for a large fee, or, the compnay has a most generous buyback program where they will pay you $100.00 for a $400.00 gps.. most generous.