Thread: In Car GPS

Originally Posted by silentC

Sounds like GPS envy to me, Dazzler.

Yes.......

I go about 350Kms North, 200Kms south, 450kms west & 70Kms East from here, that covers about 60 small, medium, large towns & a city.
The GPS covers most of them, I only have paper maps for about 20 of them.

If I go outside that radius, I can take the GPS & I don't need the paper map.

I have 3 GPS setups;
1. Tom Tom on a Palm Treo 750 PDA Next G mobile phone (with an external bluetooth GPS reciever)
2. Magellan Explorist XL
3. Northstar in the boat

Tom Tom on Palm Treo 750 is awesome, I put it on a suction holder on the windscreen so my phone and GPS are easily accessible.The Palm is a touch screen so it is easy to use as a GPS, it also has a full qwerty keyboard with buttons, so I don't have to use the stylus or a scroll set up to input destinations. I can dial contacts and talk handsfree without exiting tom tom, and I can use contacts as a destination (if they are stored correctly).
It allows to edit routes, it is quick to calculate an alternative, I can avoid motorways, tollways or roads.
The bluetooth reciever is permanently plugged in to the car, when I get in the phone finds it automatically and is ready to go. I actually use it quite alot without the reciever just to see where something is or to plan and find out how long a trip will take. It is also good as a walk around GPS.
I recently did a driving trip in Italy, France and the UK, without the Tom Tom we would have had alot of arguments and not found many of the destinations.

If you are looking for value for money I fully recommend this setup. The phone is about $700, the reciever was $99 and if you know where to look Tom Tom and maps for just about anywhere are free Once you have used a PDA mobile phone you won't look back.

Magellan Explorist XL is what I use for 4WD and as a backup in the boat (I don't have charts on it but they are available, it will give me lat and long which I can look up on a paper chart if my dedicated marine GPS dies.
I pretty much use the Magellan as an aid to mapping when 4WDing or bushwalking (it is ruggedised and water resistant) It does the bread crumb trail which is quite handy. You can get "turn by turn" maps as well as topographical but it will just beep at you for directions, it doesn't talk to you like Tom Tom.

I drove to Cape York not that long ago and ran both GPS's, the Tom Tom actually got me to the top as well as the Magellan.

As far as the car manufacturers go, Mercedes has the best navigation system I have used so far. In Europe it connects to a satellite and constantly updates, it even shows traffic conditions and will advise an alternate route to avoid congestion.

BTW, I can read a Refidex, I can even navigate with a map and a compass but why bother when I can use the GPS and have the other methods to fall back on.
Its like cutting a mortice with a chisel, sure, I can do it, but why bother when I have a router.

Cheers, Jack