IGO vs Primo, an observation

I have setup Primo and did a road test yesterday. I did not spare Primo at all. Well, it did not disappoint me but at 2 points: (1) no speedcam warnings, (2) a freeze when I stopped the car engine.
Maybe some strange choices of routes, but given the destination and me not following the desired (by primo) route, continuous recalculation and strange routing maybe not so strange.
I did not pass tunnels. I say that because I read Primo crashes or freezes in tunnels. Which would limit its use for me.

But so far so good.

My Primo setup is the same as my iGO8.3. Same maps, same POI, same speedcam, ... as much the same as possible.

Tomorrow, I am off for the weekend and I decided to take iGO on the route. Why? Because I am used to it, because it has proven everything, because I like it, because... Maybe I am just an iGO man.

And because of this.
I picked Primo and let it calculate the route. First enter the country of destination. No problem. City of destination. After the first letter Primo chooses for me??? It's the correct village but weren't there more places starting with that letter? Street: 4 choices, okay it's a tiny village. House number : 1. And the route is calculated: 188 km, 2hours 2 minutes. about 25kgr CO².
Seek nearest POI (the destination address is an hotel). It can't find the hotel itself. But one only 50m away. Okay, possible.

Next iGO. destination the same hotel. Country. Next city, first letter, second, hey - primo had it already?, third letter, fourth letter, and the choice is limited to 4 places. Hey, I was right after all? More than 1 place starting with that one letter. Enter street is choosing out of the same 4. House number: 1. Found!
Verdict: 198 km, 2 hours 11 minutes. A bit further.
POI nearby? My hotel at the first place!

Strange isn't it? Same maps, same POI files.
What if my destination was not that one village, buy another with the same first letter? So I need to know what community or bigger town the little village is a part of. Hmm. This village is also part of a bigger town. And I know that because my gps told me, not because I know the address that is given me says so.

Since for my job, I need the possibility to input detailed addresses, I am using iGO with TA maps. NT maps are not as detailed as I need. So.
Now I have another reason to use iGO. Primo does not fill my need of details in destination.

well i've read on many places that people still prefer iGO than PRIMO...

Maybe its just because iGO's mature enough and give's users all they want....

PRIMO might be the futur, but not for now i guess....

And that's why im not in a hurry to even install it on my new 5" Chinese GPS...

But i have to say, nice observations there....

the part im stuck at is why

PRIMO calculated: 188 km, 2hours 2 minutes.

and

iGO calculated: 198 km, 2 hours 11 minutes.

i mean, thats a big difference to me....

10 km and 9 minutes.....

o.O

I did not look the route in detail.
Possible the calculation don't match the real drive. But I do not care. What is important to me is I find my exact destination. With iGO so far, I did. And I was able to enter it.

Hmm... see I like the shorter route that Primo gave you. It was still to your destination and at a glance seems to be shorter and faster. For me that is a significant part of accuracy, basically having my device tell me which is the better route. I can say from my own experience thus far with Primo 1.0, that it's routes were the same igo8 had given me in the past... although I don't think the US is a good test subject for either igo8 or primo.

I do have igo8 on my big card still... although I am not impressed with the last version that was posted.

Personally though, I am sticking with Primo until it disappoints me and gives me a reason to go back.

Accuracy? I hope for you that if you want to drive to Seattle, Primo don't choose for you San Francisco, giving you no other option, just like it did on me ;) I was lucky that the one choice I had (or had not - primo selected immediately) was the place where I am going to for the weekend. Or does Primo read minds?
Okay, bad example. Seattle and San Francisco being two big cities, my destination only a very small village. Never the less, Primo did not give me the opportunity to choose another village after the first letter (while they exist - on iGO, after 4 letters I had still 4 choices to choose from) and did not find my hotel, while primo was already virtually there. IGO succeeded in both.
So repeating your final sentence "I am sticking with Primo until it disappoints me and gives me a reason to go back", this has happened to me. No shorter route can overcome not finding the destination. Remember: same maps, same POI, same settings (as much as possible between different programs).

this is weird tho,,,,

Perhaps PRIMO works best with PRIMO MAPS :/

A very quick post before I go.

Primo could be not so bad after all. I got thinking why the keyboard disappeared after the first letter. That is not logical. And read my post again, I set out a route before,so entering an entire address.
I took my device, changed the sd to the one with primo, and tried a different route. I can't pick the second letter of anything!!!! The keyboard dissappears!!! Maybe something got corrupted on the sd while crashing (see my first post)?
So I need more testing.
No time for a fresh install now. I am off!!
Just letting you know.

I am not having this keyboard problem at all.... perhaps the skin??? With the default 480x272 data.zip all seems fully functional with the keyboard and searching for destinations. It could just be the maps... I am not sure and haven't looked much into European maps. Also you might want to go into the settings and turn off "smart routing" since to me that is NNG's biggest problem.

Since I was using Primo 1.1 at 320*240 : no skin.
And no smart routing.
But a language file that got corrupted. :(

Not Primo related issue therefor, but technical. Why didn't I just think of that before

I think many of the problems people face with Primo are really related to the resolution of the device and/or whether or not they are dedicating a whole SD card to primo or sharing it with another NNG product.

I have been preaching this all along that Primo have it's own dedicated card separate from igo8. Why? Mostly because JM (Sylar) says it's the best way to do it. Well that and the workarounds using the sys.txt is not (IMO) full proof.

As for the device resolution... all the data.zips that are not official are really patch worked, even the skins. Being that even the best skinners are still figuring out all the bits and pieces that are new in primo, it is a major cause of all these "bugs" people are reporting. It's hard to give an honest review of the Primo software when you aren't using an actual Primo data.zip or running it at it's intended resolution.

That all said, people need to consider the cause of some of these problems and make an educated decision on whether to try it or not based on the knowledge of the cause of some of these issues. As I stated, I have been using Primo since Sylar's first release on a Mio c320 with 480x272 resolution and the original official data.zip without any skin. it's been running smooth as silk from the beginning.

Now, if your device is not 480x272, or if you are using a skin, or if you are sharing an SD card with primo and igo8 or amigo, well then expect there to be some issues... that is just the way things are for now, at least until official (actual) data.zip's are released from NNG that support other resolutions.