May/June 2005

A relatively new name to the UK's satellite navigation market is Alturion, a Dutch developer whose products are already available around Europe, and were covered in our Novemberecember edition. Now they are formally available in the UK through a distribution agreement with EasyDevices.co.uk, which already sells systems from suppliers such as TomTom, Destinator and CoPilot.

There are three main shrink-wrapped products in the Alturion range, starting with the PDA-only software package at £76, and extending to the Professional edition (£154), which runs on laptop PCs and includes route-planning and tracking capabilities.

One of Alturion's claims to fame is its degree of configurability. Users can select the vehicle type (car, truck, bus, taxi and so on), or even request pedestrian instructions. They can also enter personal preferences such as "avoid toll roads". Weather and traffic information can be fed in from the TMC system.

The application also allows for installation of irregular map areas, cutting out unnecessary areas and keeping map file sizes small. Individual cities or regions can be installed, along with the connecting roads.