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kinzelHi there, traveler ...
have you got the blues?
You say that roads you used ten years ago now go someplace else?
You say that roads you never heard of go where you want to go?
You say that roads that used to be friendly local scenic byways
with speed limits on the slow side of 40 now sport dazzling multi-span three-high bridge interconnections
with 8 lane roads that didn't exist in 1997, all moving at 78 miles an hour wall-to-wall?
is that what's troubling you, Bubby?
In other words, while we were never lost, we were discommoded several times by the rapid change in roads; we came across places where the road we needed to be on was now... continued on the other side of a superhighway, with no bridge to be found... and where the cross street now feeds a barrier littered road with one way signs and a mile-long Robin Hood's barn round-trip to go 40 feet.
So, talk to me of GPS, and of features. I note we have no bluetooth phone, so we prolly don't need that, eh? And who expects the map to sing? Not the most urgent feature for us, that ...
Thanks!
have you got the blues?
You say that roads you used ten years ago now go someplace else?
You say that roads you never heard of go where you want to go?
You say that roads that used to be friendly local scenic byways
with speed limits on the slow side of 40 now sport dazzling multi-span three-high bridge interconnections
with 8 lane roads that didn't exist in 1997, all moving at 78 miles an hour wall-to-wall?
is that what's troubling you, Bubby?
In other words, while we were never lost, we were discommoded several times by the rapid change in roads; we came across places where the road we needed to be on was now... continued on the other side of a superhighway, with no bridge to be found... and where the cross street now feeds a barrier littered road with one way signs and a mile-long Robin Hood's barn round-trip to go 40 feet.
So, talk to me of GPS, and of features. I note we have no bluetooth phone, so we prolly don't need that, eh? And who expects the map to sing? Not the most urgent feature for us, that ...
Thanks!
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no subject
2008-07-23 02:33 (UTC)I have a eTrex legend HCx, which I would not recommend for use in car navigation; no audio output, too small a screen, and in need of additional maps in many areas. Which is OK, as I got it for hiking and geocaching.
But once I updated the maps, it became usable for automotive navigation down here in Mississippi, where I am currently exiled.
And while I was familiar with a few errors in maps of my original stomping grounds around Chicagoland, here in Mississippi, the errors are more severe. I know at least three places there the GPS will have you driving through someones garage, on a road that either never existed, or hasn't existed since the streets here were paved.
So check the map data; Garmin has this page (http://www8.garmin.com/cgi-bin/mapgen/webmap.cgi?p=21299201&u=1&z=2&w=480&h=360&rz=0&k=1&sc=1), which will allow people to examine the maps for their area of interest before they buy. (Note that it needs Internet Explorer, or FireFox, or possibly something set to pretend to be them...) It can be a bit temperamental these days; it seems to me that it was better behaved last December, but who can understand the vagaries of web developers.
Another issue is how likely you are to obey voice commands from a device at the risk of your own life. Some survey in the UK is claiming 300,000 accidents caused by GPS navigation. Personally, I think quite a few of those would have happened even if the drivers had been using a map, fiddling with the radio, or in extreme cases, just driving.