Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:42:49 -0800
Reply-To: neil N <musomuso@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: neil N <musomuso@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: What are my best PC GPS options?
In-Reply-To: <1ed6d210801160758p56232c4cw112e0544ec2ae8db@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Hi all.
Was curious about GPS myself. Did some searching/reading on the
TomTom's and the Garmins.
Found this on the Garmin 660
http://www.garminnuvi660.net/
(it's like 6-8 min long)
Not knocking the TT or touting the Garmins, but this video basically
shows a user going through the features of the Garmin 660. I found it
useful as a newbie to see a decent GPS in action.
Any Garmin users out there know if there are big diffs between the
Garmin 650 and 660?
Cheers,
Neil.
On Jan 16, 2008 7:58 AM, Doug Alcock <doug.alcock@gmail.com> wrote:
> I had a Garmin handheld GPS (which was stolen) --- it would work with a
> laptop but I didn't like the cumbersomeness (if that is indeed a word) of
> the arrangement. And the display on the GPS unit itself was way too small
> for my aging eyes.
>
> My stepson recently bought a TomTom One for his car --- I've borrowed it a
> number of times and I'm sold. They're about $250 Cdn --- nice big screen
> that I can read while driving and a really good touchscreen interface that
> is also usable while driving. Coverage and accuracy is good --- I have both
> found and been navigated to some pretty obscure addresses and locations. And
> it is sooo much more convenient than messing around with a laptop.
>
> Don't know for sure about the backroads coverage but my experience with the
> TomTom is that if you can find the road on a map it's going to be in the
> TomTom. May not apply to the backroads of BC --- but worth checking into. My
> experience with the logging/backroads of BC when I lived there is that I
> could find them on a map and they had names/designations --- which suggests
> to me that they'd be in the TomTom. YMMV of course...........
>
> Cheers,
> Doug
> Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
>
>
>
> On 1/15/08, Loren Busch <starwagen@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm glad to hear that Delorme has improved the coverage in Canada. The
> > issue Dave was trying to address is coverage in more remote areas,
> > specifically he was asking about the interior of BC. Here in the States I
> > didn't have any complaints about the coverage on the Delorme. But on a
> > trip
> > two years ago I ran the laptop most every day for three weeks. I
> > alternated
> > between Streets & Trips and Delorme software. And I'll stick to my
> > opinion
> > that the Delorme software sucks, a really bad user interface for any
> > searching or planning. I found it very frustrating and ended up using
> > only
> > Streets & Trips for the last week of the trip. But, given that, I found
> > both
> > very poor for use in town. Both got lost and gave wrong directions when
> > driving in traffic if the signal was lost for a few seconds. If you
> > pulled
> > up to a stop light neither could figure out what direction you were going
> > when standing still and started providing directions that were all wrong.
> > In a severe test, getting to a friends place in Kennsington, Ca. (next to
> > Berkley) I'd still be driving in circles if I hadn't known where I was
> > going. Summing up so far, unless you have a second person on board to act
> > as navigator the laptop based systems fall far short. Dedicated units
> > meant
> > for use in vehicles seem to be a much better solution. BUT, those tend to
> > lack the detailed coverage in the boonies, are set up for urban
> > navigation.
> > BTW, to any reading this, I'm all ears for any better solutions that have
> > been found. My experience is limited at this point.
> >
> > On Jan 15, 2008 11:48 AM, Mike Collum <collum@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > > I don't know what year the DeLorme software you tried was from but the
> > > 2008 version has greatly increased Canadian coverage. I used the 2008
> > > Street Atlas Plus and even the small streets (and phone numbers) in
> > > Almonte as well as Head of St. Margaret's Bay and Halifax were shown.
> > > Apparently, all of Canada is shown that way but those places are where I
> > > really used it. The version I had before that only showed "most" of
> > > Canada's main highways.
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.dougalcock.com
>
--
Neil Nicholson. 1981 Air Cooled Westfalia - "Jaco"
http://web.mac.com/tubaneil
Engine swap beginings: http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/
|