Two days ago, I was having quite a GOOD experience with Ovi maps.

As usual, we got into the car in a big hurry, just like Alice in Wonderland, "We are late. We are late."

The car was running 75 MPH shortly, I sticked out my TomTom, a stand alone GPS, it would not give me a route, the target location was a new subdivision and the map is outdate, so, TomTom: "no route planned"...

I gently put the TomTom back into my backpack, and this time, I sticked out my N900.
With the car running 75 MPH, no internet connection, my Ovi map got a GPS lock in 2 minutes. I kind of know where we supposed to go, I scrolled to my destination manually (100+ miles from my starting point), and took that as point B, and connected to my GPS location as point A, Bingo, a route was drawn instantly while my dedicated GPS TomTom failed!

I followed the route and the tracking was meticulous, when getting into town, there was a minor detour from construction. No sweat, I blowed up the Ovi scale, and easily found some small side roads and detoured for a couple minutes, back to the Ovi route with no difficulty. And of course, we made it in time even though we have NO IDEA where was the actual destination in the beginning

Bottomline, Ovi map is a tool. Just like ANY tool in life, you learned it, it will work for you. I am pretty sure I would NOT have made it with my TomTom and I would have to make tons of phonecall for help if Ovi is NOT available.

I conclude with a few tricks I have learned thruout the frequent use of Ovi:

1) gps lock, in order of importance, seeing the sky > eCoach > wifi.
2) saving your landmark or POI, http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38872&page=2, thread #51
3) stop Ovi from spinning, http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38872&page=3, thread #103

bun