16. AAA Roadside Assistance

Figure 44: AAA RoadSide Assistance Screen

The "AAA Roadside Assistance" screen contains all of the information you will need to provide AAA Roadside Assistance emergency services to your current location. If you have a valid AAA membership, you can enter your membership # into the Maestro so that everything you need to call AAA is displayed on this screen (including the toll-free number to call).

17. Finding a Restaurant

In GPS speak, a "Point of Interest" is a business address saved on the GPS. You can think of the POI database as a pre-loaded yellow pages. Most modern GPS devices come pre-loaded with a Points of Interest database, allowing you to find nearby businesses, such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and more.

Maestro 3100 ships with a relatively small POI database of just 750,000 entries. That may sound like a lot, but consider that Garmin's nuvi has over 6 million entries, and some GPS devices have as many as 10 million entries.

The reduced POI database is a flaw with the Maestro 3100. By the way, Magellan's more expensive Maestro 3140 has a much larger POI database, as do the 4000-series Maestros.

Figure 45: The POI Search Menu

Maestro lets you search for a POI either by name or by category. So if you know you're looking for a restaurant, you would tap on "Search by Category", but if you aren't sure what category a particular item might be listed under, but know the name of the place, you can search the entire POI database by tapping on "Search by Name".

I'll test the POI functionality by searching for nearby restaurants, so I"ll tap on "Search by Category".

Figure 46: Choosing a POI Search Category

Scroll through the category list and tap on the POI category you want to search.

Figure 47: Choosing a POI Search Subcategory

Some POI categories have sub-categories. For example, if you tap choose Restaurants as the main category, you can then choose a cuisine as a subcategory, or search all restaurants by choosing "ALL SUBCATEGORIES".

Figure 48: Setting the POI Search Area

After choosing a category (and possibly a subcategory), you need to tell Maestro where to search. You can search:

• Near Current Position
• New City (requires entering a city name)
• Near Address (requires entering an address)

Figure 49: Viewing the POI Search Results

After telling the Maestro what type of POI to look for, and where to look, the GPS produces a list of matching POIs, ordered by closeness to the location you specified.

Tapping on the top portion of the display shows detailed information about the highlighted POI in the list. The arrow and distance indicates the direction and distance in a straight line from your current position to the POI. Note that this distance is "as the crow flies", and not the actual driving distance.

Figure 50: Finding POIs via the Map Screen

Another nice feature on the 3100 is the ability to view POI information directly from the map view. You can configure which POI categories will appear on the map screen while driving. Each category is represented with a unique icon, as shown above in figure 50. Notice that the Restaurant POI is represented by the knife & fork icon. To view details about a given POI, tap on the icon. You can then route directly to that POI.

18.Routing Engine Performance

One of the most critical components of any turn-by-turn GPS navigation system is the routing engine. Not surprisingly, it's also one of the most difficult and complex aspects for the manufacturer to get right (and it's the aspect of GPS navigation that is least well understood by consumers), as there are so many variables to consider. The Maestro 3100 ships with NAVTEQ mapping data from 2007, so that is already a major plus. The two largest mapping data providers are NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas (for more detailed information on both NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas, check out "NAVTEQ vs. TeleAtlas, Which one is Better?"). NAVTEQ is more accurate and complete in North America, so it's preferable to buy a GPS that uses NAVTEQ rather than TeleAtlas (as of this writing).

However, there is a lot more to a routing engine than just the mapping data provider. How a given GPS will determine the "best" route is the result of not only the mapping data, but also how many additional data points, or attributes, are factored into the equation. For example, are certain roads closed after hours or on the weekend? What is the average rate of speed for a given road? Statistically speaking, more accidents happen when making left turns as opposed to right turns; is the GPS unit factoring that into the route? Each company takes all this data and compiles it in different ways. The number of attributes used varies depending on how much money the manufacturer is willing to spend on their mapping data.