Finding and loading those maps is harder than it needs to be, but it is doable.

Our secret shopper experience
Sometimes we get loaner units in from the developers, but sometimes we also go out and purchase products to review, to see what the real consumer is experiencing. We did this with Pharos. We purchased a Pocket GPS Navigator for HP Jornada 500 Series product from PC Connection. It came in and we started installing it.

We were shocked to find that the package contained Ostia software and maps from 2001. Apparently, the box had been sitting on the shelf for nearly three years! A phone call to Pharos technical support was handled moderately well. We were told that if we faxed in our sales receipt, they'd give us download access to the new software and maps. However, when we got online, we found that to download the maps for the entire U.S., you had to download individual county maps for every county in the country. There was no single-file download to get the update.

Getting the entire country would take us hours and hours (not something your typical editor has in extra supply). Figure 50 states with 20+ counties in each, and you're talking 1,000 individual file downloads!

When we requested Pharos either make available a large download or send us update CDs, we were informed that since we didn't purchase the product directly from Pharos, we'd have to purchase the CDs at the full price of the product (nearly as much as the PC Connection purchase price, which included the out of date map CDs). Further, the technician suggested we might consider keeping the item we purchased from PC Connection and then additionally purchasing the CDs from Pharos because, to paraphrase him, it'd still be cheaper than buying a current package of both CDs and GPS from Pharos.

Needless to say, PC Connection claims their stock is newly provided by Pharos, and of course, Pharos tells us that they never ship out-of-date stock. And yet, we found out-of-date stock and and also found that Pharos was unwilling to solve a legitimate and verifiable customer service problem!

Eventually, we did identify ourselves as from Computing Unplugged and they did send us the updated software. I was very disappointed. Given that a set of CDs costs, oh, fifty cents, it was very poor and very scarcity-conscious customer support. Had we not been press, we would have returned the product to PC Connection and simply bought a competitors' product.

In fact, we did return the product to PC Connection and PC Connection gets kudos for exceptional customer service and a solid, easy, no hassle return process.

Bottom line
So, what's the bottom-line on the Pharos Pocket GPS Navigator? Well, first and foremost, it does work, although with some definite quirks. The fact that it runs on a Pocket PC with only 32MB of internal memory is a plus. And, once you get used to Ostia's quirks, you can find your way.

Additionally, the hardware flexibility is nice, and only needing one cigarette-lighter adapter along with keeping the Compact Flash slot free did earn the product points.

On the negative side, although their customer support was pleasant and courteous, a legitimate purchase backed up by a receipt showing, definitively, that the product was purchased just days earlier resulted in us being told that we'd have to pay full price to buy the current CDs, just to be able to use what we'd legitimately bought from an authorized reseller. There's just no excuse for that!

On yet another hand, at under $200 (assuming you get all the current parts), you do get an awful lot of bang for your buck.

So, do we recommend you buy this product if you want an inexpensive in-car navigation system for your Pocket PC? The answer is, provisionally, yes. The product does do the job. That said, we'll be looking at other GPS products to see if any do the job with a bit more grace.

Whenever we have a product review with a whole lot of "on the other hands," the resulting rating tends to be a 3 out of 5. As Managing Editor Denise Amrich says, "It's better than nothing. It's vastly better than nothing."

OUR RATING: 3 of 5

Dr. Humayun Bakht completed his Ph.D at the School of Computing and Mathematics in Liverpool at John Moores University. Prior to his current course of studies, he has successfully completed his MSc Software Engineering and BSc Electronics Engineering from University of Liverpool UK and Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi, Pakistan. Humayun's research interest is mobile ad-hoc networks, in particular, the development of a new routing algorithm for this type of networking. He can be reached at humayunbakht@yahoo.co.uk and you can visit his Web site at http://www.geocities.com/humayunbakht/.