Date:         Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:05:06 -0700
Reply-To:     Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Subject:      Re: Maps vs GPS
Comments: To: Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <4d1b79350910101803j660d9955nd0321aa778204d56@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Maps and GPS are complementary.
With just the GPS one becomes myopic. I know people who drive by GPS, get where they need to, but have no idea of the "lay of the land". They simply become slaves of the directions of the device, and should need arise they cannot navigate on their own because they lack the big picture.

Maps give a great big picture, but it is difficult to keep all the details in ones head so at least when I'm driving alone it is great to have the GPS call out the directions in tricky traffic situations.

A good GPS is $100-200 nowdays, so just a couple of tankfuls of gas. Much of the quality has to do with the software, not the box itself. I find it amazing that a 2GB micro SD card can hold every backstreet of Europe. That amount of detail in paper maps would probably have filled the whole Westy rear closet on my and my wife's three week trip through France, Italy, Austria, Lichtenstein, Switzerland and Germany. North America is a bit easier to navigate by road, so I haven't bothered buying the road map set, but I have the complete topographic map of Canada (still the second largest country in the world?) on another finger nail size memory card. That same 1:50,000 scale topo map set fills a whole room in the university library!

B.t.w. I use a simple handheld Garmin backpacking GPS I bought for $150. It can also load the road map sets and have the same routing functionality as the more expensive car models. I think the innards of all the Garmins are probably similar or the same. Just that different models have different screens, buttons and are marketed to different segments.

Martin (and '82 Westy 1.9TD "Poppie")


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