You can't possibly believe this to be a accuracy issue, as you don't need to be very accurate to ballpark proximity. Acquisition time I can understand—especially for certain unlucky individuals in certain areas—but it's not that bad for most.

Out of interest, what's the battery impact leaving the GPS on all the time? (would it be possible to use it in some sort of low-power mode with infrequent updates or somesuch?)

No real idea yet-- so far I've only used it in the car with power plugged in. As long as I'm willing to wait a couple of minutes for a fix, it's fine. It came in real handy when we went out of town for rcadden's (tabletguru) wedding.

Actually, the original Newton MessagePad had an extraordinarily advanced and elegantly implemented GPS receiver featuring a highly refined oscillatory crystal that was superior to any currently available non-military GPS units, but the achievement of its potential performance went unnoticed at the time due to an unfortunate dearth of orbiting GPS satellites. The situation was not unlike this famous historical analogue.

Benson --

What the Newton had was an innate understanding of several key (colloquial) phrases.... such as 'next <week:month:year:tuesday>' or 'after <noon:lunch:dinner:2:30PM>', etc. Combined with a knowledge of how the address book and appointment calendar stored its data, it could turn "lunch with susie a week from next friday" into an actual calendar/todo entry... even figuring out who 'susie' was (or presenting a list of choices), and scheduling around items already on the calendar.

It went like this: geek is playing with neat electronic gizmo, and naturally piques the curiosity of nearby females predisposed to nerdy guys. she starts conversation about gadget. geek demonstrates gadget's unique properties, including handwriting recognition, and this built-in "AI" that could turn vague english language into real 'data', and even determine what class of data it is... after a relatively short demo, the girl has not only provided the geek with her address and phone number, but actually scheduled a lunch date with him! (yes, i used my messagepad 110 to good effect dozens of times while i was skipping class and 'hanging out'.)

...and, to date, the newton is the only apple product i've ever purchased (or owned)

ps: and i still have it. it doesn't impress the geek-loving girls anymore, though.

Too bad; you had me about to go buy one, whatever the price.

As I understand it though, the whole "soup" database everything is stored in permitted that app to readily be extended to handle data from other apps as well as the built-in address book, etc. Of course, this is all vague recollection from reading writings of Newton fans online, and no Newton fans would ever exaggerate how great and extensible their toy was -- 10 years ago! -- would they?

It is not good enough for the job specified. It is perfectly accurate when it is working, and I guess if you bolt it in your car it would work, but if you have it in your pocket and take it out to look at, there is no way it is going to aquire a signal unless you are going to stand there for a while.
It would need fairly instant aquisition for this sort of idea to work, like the tomtoms.

Not something I could try on mine!

Please, people: Don't think that a single positioning source can cater to all needs, whether it is GPS, GSM or some other system.

Instead, go modular and abstract the source of position information away with GeoClue and your app can get current location from GPS, IP, Plazes, ...

See my slides from FISL this year: http://www.slideshare.net/bergie/geo...ion-framework/

Perhaps mixing N810 GPS with "Remember the milk" API could be a good start:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/api/

Best regards,
---
Manrique

I can wait for minutes, maybe in the rain, to acquire signals before went into my car.
If I don't wait, it takes even longer to acquire signals (I own a roadster, this type of car should be no problem with the body).

After acquire a signal I can stop driving and configure my routes.

Sorry, this is nearly useless: a disaster

After reading all the arm-waving about the N810's GPS I decided to take my brand new N810 for a walk, just to see what it was like.

It was raining, so I put the thing in a waterproof map case so I could use it in the rain, then stuck it in my pocket out the way.

To lock satellites and get a location in Maemo-mapper initially took about two minutes, which is about the same as the bluetooth GPS I used to use on my N800.

While walking around the GPS maintained a lock with the N810 in my pocket, and it accurately showed me where I was - I took a shortcut across some fields, and at the point where I rejoined the main road my N810 also said I was stood at the edge of the road.

The only issue I've noticed is that the accuracy wanders if the device is stationary. It always claims I'm moving at 0.1-0.3MPh in a random direction and can jump 5 or 10 metres. I find it hard to believe my house is shuffling around on its foundations that much I know this is a GPS issue, but it'd be really helpful if Maemo mapper could ignore speeds less than 1MPh, for example.