ViaMichelin Launches X-930 a Portable Navigation System

One of the subsidiaries of Michelin, the popular tires manufacturer, ViaMichelin has stormed the market with its entry-level portable navigation system- ViaMichelin X-930. Indeed this device is averagely portable with a weight of 4.9 ounces, a dimension of 4.8x2.8x0.7 inches and a decent-size (3.5-inch) 320- by 240-pixel screen which Michelin claimed to be non-reflective.

It has a 1-gigabyte SD card that comes preloaded with Navteq maps for the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) and approximately 1.5 million POIs (points of interest). There is also a six front- panel hardware buttons, two on the left-hand side of the screen and four aligned vertically on the right-hand side. The buttons on the left control volume up/down. The buttons on the right are for the main menu, history, GPS status, and POIs.

It uses an Intel PXA 270 312-MHz processor with 32MB of RAM and a sensitive SiRF Star III GPS receiver and it runs Microsoft's Windows CE.net version 4.2 OS.  There are two ball-and-socket joints for adjustment, and there's a knob that you have to twist to secure the suction cup to the windshield. Fortunately, the installation poster walks you through connecting the device to the mounting bracket and inserting the SD card. It also includes a picture of the X-930 that calls out the function of each of the hardware buttons.

However, there are a few discrepancies about the device including its menus which make it difficult to navigate and were inefficiently laid out; it doesn't support text-to-speech conversion but during navigation, it announces upcoming turns at appropriate intervals. The pricing is though very good at just $199.