on the road with the 6700 - a report

[schettj]

OK, so I am just now back from my first major road trip with my 6700 (running the beta 2.2 rom) and it was wonderific, so I thought I would share.

Before the trip, I got my old ipaq Bluetooth GPS dusted off and hooked up, and got the MS beta Live Search app installed and working with the GPS. It seemed a tad twitchy, but overall it worked and having live GPS positioning with your route for free, with no maps to download, seemed worth a shot.

Also had orb2.0 up and running to get at all my mp3s and my TV/PVR library while on the road.

Finally, the 2.2 rom beta and latest PRL made sure I was good to go with data roaming, should I need that.

I also installed MortPlayer as my third attempt to get a usable mp3 player on this thing, along with hours of NPR and a couple of mp3-audio books.

Ok, off we go to Maryland from California via Denver, on United Airlines. United does 'easy update' emails to you, if you want, for your trip, so I enabled that - sure enough I got email updates before each leg and as we landed with Gate info (which united seems to change, OFTEN, in Denver...) waiting for me in the inbox.

So, before takeoff and on landing, I did an email check, and no more trying to understand the garbled announcements of gates. Score 1!

In flight I was in flight mode (which does indeed help battery life!) happily listening to an audio book in mortplayer. Mortplayer supports multiple bookmarks (nice feature!) and treats each directory of mp3s as a playlist - both handy features, so it's gonna stick around on my 6700...

Anywhoo, at the destination, I found decent EVDO coverage, but it's also verizon territory and when sprint got spotty it would roam, maintaining data connections with ease. We took three long drives to visit far-flung friends, and the MS live search map/gps worked fine every time - only problem noted there is it would sometimes hang the phone after we got where we were going, when I tried to exit it. Still not bad for free

For use with the GPS in-car, I was using a Motorola car power adapter, - kept the 6700 charged and allowed me to leave it 'on' no sleep, full backlight - for several hours in the car. That's pretty much a must if you're gonna use it for nav. Also a must is having a co-pilot to read the turns for you, as the current MS beta software doesn't do any audio turn announcements - heck even a little bing noise would have been enough for me.

Beyond that, the 6700 was its usual useful self for SMS, email, web, and the odd phone call - I was able to keep up (but not really post) with ppcgeeks and a few other sites all on the phone, and used it as a modem three times when I needed to do a bit of focused 'net work on the lappy and no wifi was available.

Returning home United had a 1 hour delay getting out of Maryland, which caused us to miss the connection in Denver. When we finally did land I had the nice email update sitting in my inbox telling me we had been re-booked on a later flight, so we already knew what was up and could just go get some seats assigned. I searched for earlier flights while we taxied, and got us on both standby lists via the UAL web site, but we never did get on one - they were all packed! During the 5 hour (ugh) wait for that flight, we watched some tv, surfed, kept updated on the ever changing gate assignment for the flight, and burned thru the spare battery I carry for it - I was able to recharge it off my laptop before the flight and listened to tunes all the way home.

If you've traveled with your 6700, you know all this already, but this was my first long trip with mine, and it was a great experience. It did everything I needed it to do, and for the most part (and as a windows ce user from the early days, this is saying a lot) it did it well.

[JackSchitt28]

glad to hear that it held up for you. it is important to have a device you can count on while your waiting those long hours in the airport.