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Think of satnav and the chances are you think of what the industry likes to call PNDs - Personal Navigation Devices. These are standalone sat-nav units that you slap into your vehicle and that might also act as Bluetooth handsfree kit or play music at you in addition to routing you from one place to the next.

But if you've already got a smartphone or PDA then you have another option - buy a sat-nav application to use with it. If your smartphone or PDA already has GPS built in, so much the better, though a Bluetooth ‘puck' is also a viable option.

CoPilot Live occupies this space, and in my view it dominates it. But it has been more than a year since the last major software revision, CoPilot Live 6. Times have moved on a lot since then and pressure has been on developer ALK to come up with some serious enhancements in order to stay ahead of the game.

To make that happen ALK has done work on several fronts for CoPilot Live 7 for Windows Mobile. The user interface has been completely revamped. There are tweaks to many of the existing features, and the addition of some new ones. And there's a new desktop companion, CoPilot Central which you get as part of the deal.

Let's talk about CoPilot Central first. This is the desktop ‘hub' for managing CoPilot Live 7. It'll monitor for software updates, new POIs and so on, and download them to whatever device is running CoPilot whenever you connect it to your PC. This is rather nifty, as it allows ALK to ensure that you always have the latest information to hand.

CoPilot Central can also be used for trip planning in its own right, and you can pre-plan journeys and download them to your device later. I wouldn't want to do this myself, but I can see that some people might like the approach. You can also use it to obtain and download updated safety camera information.

You don't need a desktop computer or CoPilot Central to install CoPilot on your mobile device. It comes on ‘nested' flash memory - microSD card in a miniSD card adaptor in an SD card adaptor. Pop the appropriate card in your device and the software sets itself up.

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