Taxi Driver Online

Any views on the new system?

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Not from me, but what do the makers say is so good about it?

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IDFIMH

Like another 4 or 5 suppliers they claim to be the biggest supplier of despatch systems to the taxi trade.

Still, not getting anyone to speak up for them is worrying.

Maybe I shall go slowly.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

do they have a website
as i would like to have a look at it

We moved to Navlite.
It has more features and cost nothing.
With data terminals at only 50 quid now I can't see the point it getting a phone contract.

Has Navlite got a website, we are thinking about going down the Cordic route but its quite expensive.

Before going the Cordic way look at Mercury.

Same technology but seems better thought through than Cordic from the presentations we have had.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

I thought it all depended on how much beer each firm offered.

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IDFIMH

Get what you pay for, cheap money buys a cheap system. Cordic is reliable consistant and back-up is faultless.
Cordic user of 9 months.

http://www.diplomat.co.uk

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Next time you wave, use all your fingers.

Costs nothing !
No such thing as a free lunch.
The man who works for nothing is never short of customers.
Is Navlite a charity ? Are you really that stupid that you think you get anything worthwhile for nothing. They are in it for the money same as every other company, it's only bait on a hook.
It is usually the case that the more put into marketing ploys the more inferior the product and the more you end up paying in the long term.
Quality should always be you first priority, I would never base my decision to buy any product soley on cost.

"same technology" like the Model T Ford and 2004 Rolls Royce same technology; internal combustion.

I tried both, they both use XDA's, one is a rehash of Midas the other original purpose written software. Look beyond the wrapping. Cordic does not have a slick sales team doing promotions but you want steak not the sizzle.

For your sort of operation and size of Fleet Tom Thumb, then the PDAs might be a better option rather than radio, then again you could always have the PDAs.

The only thing you would have to consider would be the cost of calls to the vehicles, but you could always come off your remote site, leave the radios in the cars (disable the data side of things) and just use them to talk to the cars locally, this would save in costs for calls for local units and also cut down on having to spend money on a landline and remote site fees.

regards
RadioMan

Tom, are you really thinking seriously about moving away from Auriga?

As for mercury, it does have a website: http://www.exelmanagement.co.uk

However...

Mercury (in my humble personal opinion) is the old version of Diplomat, and does not have the flexibility of Diplomat's communication protocols being flexible across a wide spectrum of systems.

Everyone I have heard of, has been well impressed with Mercury's demonstrations. However, even there website tells a story, as it seems no more finished than it was a year ago.

My favourite system of the moment is Mobisoft. But, and it is a very BIG but, it costs an absolute fortune to buy, and an absolute fortune to maintain apparently (judging by their support and on costs). Seems like it is only fit for millionaires like Garry and Foss at A&B for example, or County Hall systems.

My personal opinion is that systems are still too expensive once you start adding on the bits and pieces. And That, is because, as yet, there is no Industry Standard. No system has yet leapt head and shoulders above the rest, so they are all chasing a tooo small segment of the market and the costs have to be what they are.

Mercury's free for a year, cannot really be free for a year, as there are airtime costs.

Diplomats free Navigator, isn't really free, as it is not really useable without significant training and the like, street databases, expensive telephone systems and the like, and as soon as you buy them, then you really want to upgrade to full Navigator. And so on, and so on.

IF, Diplomat can get all their promises fullfilled (eg Routing Engines, multi-system interface and so on), it WOULD APPEAR that it will be the best system on the market. But then, it may well be the most expensive too. As all these little add ons, are four figure sums, and with on-going support costs of a sizeable nature too. Who knows.

I can buy a ream of paper and a pen for £2.

We dummy ran NavLite against our operators, and it was not that great a success. The decision was, not to use it, until we buy the full package later in the year.

Shame, but thats the way it goes.

What I cannot understand, is why anyone who already has Auriga, would be thinking of swapping to Mercury.....?

Have Auriga lost the plot?

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There is Significant Unmet Demand for my Opinion.

Not true. Diplomat's Navigator/Navlite and Exel's Mercury are separate derivatives of Midas. We have both taken the same code and done different things on it.


How much is your time worth? How much do your staff cost you?

Regarding Navlite, the minimum cost is your time. If you already have computers, and have the time to read (and understand) the manuals, and enter your own street data, then it costs nothing more than your time. I would suggest that most people who decide to buy streetdata and training, do so because they know how much their time is worth.

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Next time you wave, use all your fingers.