How many times have you been belting along on your way to a meeting only to hit a long queue and then to rub salt in the wound the RDS traffic report tells you the queue you are in is actually very long and then only then do you wonder if there is something that could have warned you earlier. Well a company by the name of Team Warrior provide a software suite "Pocket Live Wire" which aims to provide people on the move with accurate data in time to do something with it.

Pocket Live Wire is a suite of applications but we tested the Traffic module primarily, it will run on any Pocket PC 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003 equipped machine it takes about 2mb of disk space and needs a further 3mb of RAM free to run effectively, so its not a very heavyweight application, the only other thing you need is a GPRS account with a UK mobile provider as this is the data channel to update your PDA.

Installation is simple enough once you get past all the warning about using your PDA while on the move (us, break the law?) the key stage is setting your GPRS connection details and then connecting to the livewire server, once connected you can select which services you are subscribing too, for our test we had the Traffic and News services and you get weather bundled free with the traffic service. So onto getting some data, after starting the application you are presented with the main Pocket Live Wire screen showing which services to which you have subscribed, to use the traffic service you select that option and then input your start location and destination and you can also select any key roads or areas you will be travelling through the application can then retrieve data about your proposed route.

You can then view any known detail about hold ups, accidents etc as supplied by the AA, once on route you can check by simply refreshing the data manually or you can set Live Wire to connect periodically and display any new information automatically, now we found that this is the best operation mode but you have to be wary as the system is using your GPRS data allowance and setting the update to be too frequent could result in big bills. The connection between your PDA and the GPRS device can be via a cradle and data cable, Bluetooth or perhaps a GPRS card modem within the PDA this connection and the GPRS account are not included in the package.

On our test route the initial traffic data was good but not that relevant to our route more the surrounding roads, as the Live Wire software does not use a GPS signal it cannot know your exact route or where abouts on the route your are and so when nearing the midway point we received a message about an accident near the start, apart from a smug feeling that we'd missed it this wasn't much use. If a vital piece of data arrives relating to your key roads or destination the message screen will change to the warning view ensuring you see the message, Pocket Live wire isn't easy to change while on the move so you must make sure you programme the route before you set off and then messages can simply be acknowledged with a single screen tap.

During our journey the Pocket Live wire service ran smoothly enough and our only issue was with GPRS signal availability which seems to be flaky outside major cities or trunk roads but then we can't blame that on the Team Warrior guys, the alerts are clear and easy to read and if there are multiple messages (as we found near London) you can scroll through them with arrows at the bottom of the screen.

The news facility is also easy to drive and most useful, although you really shouldn't be viewing the pages on the move, we stopped in the South Minns service station off the A1 and delved through the latest news headlines which are presented as a list to start with and then individual news stories with images can be viewed by drilling down. We did find that these images were the most data hungry aspect of Pocket Live Wire and we'd use it sparingly if it was our own GPRS bill.

There are a number of other applications within the software suite including an email to speech system, speed camera warning system and route planner but we found that the Traffic service with its free weather updates is probably enough for most road warriors and reps.

Pocket Live wire costs £6 per month for the subscription to the traffic service or £64.80 if purchased as a 12 month bundle, you can add news for another £3.50 a month or £37.80 plus you must budget for you GPRS costs which from our heavy usage could by 100k per day but in real daily use should be less especially if you don't go for the news with images package

Overall we were impressed with the system, when combined with GPRS data speeds and always on connection Pocket Live Wire was a great companion and if combined with a good PDA navigation system Like TOM TOM 2 it makes navigating the UK's congested roads a lot easier.

For more details or to purchase visit http://www.teamwarrior.com/index.htm

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