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Date:         Mon, 7 Jul 2014 15:07:26 -0400
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Re: The end of MS Streets & Trips
Comments: To: Rob <vwrobb@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <53b9590e.5127320a.3e24.5d9a@mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 10:06 AM 7/6/2014, Rob wrote: >I have sat in the back of my bus with the laptop turned on, S&T on >the screen trying to figure out where I wanted to go

And I, but with the DeLorme software. For what it's worth, I can tell you it works and works well for me, and combined with a fourteen-inch laptop on a fancy mount (a strip of nylon tent cloth run through the defrost vents on the dash and the laptop hinge, tied with a bow) it's a formidable road navigator. As to how it compares to S&T, I have preferred it, but there's context that informs my choice:

My brother ran both in tandem on a big trip I was part of years ago, when he first got his RV - we both wished we could combine the parts we preferred from each, but I ended up sticking with DeLorme and he with Microsoft. I'd been using a GPS in the van for a while already, but it was a marine GPS and I was using it to drive marine charting software that had a US and Canada road database but no interest in roads as a concept, or a route as other than a specific collection of waypoints.

The uSoft program, then anyway, made it very difficult to get detailed info about how the receiver was managing, which satellites. I hated that. Every GPS receiver by the nature of the system knows which particular satelllites it should be able to see at a given moment and the azimuth and elevation to each one, is it receiving that one, signal strength if so , geometric information It was my first experience of using GPS that didn't routinely have a clear line of sight to within a few degrees of the horizon in all directions, and I really wanted to know how it was going to behave cooped up in metal and trees and walls. So for me that killed Streets and Trips. Chris was curious too, but he didn't have my longstanding relationship with GPS as a strictly line-of-sight system that was an amazing and much more convenient complement to Loran-C, but which like Loran C had to be watched like a hawk because if I trusted it blindly sure as little green apples it would eventually stick me on a nasty sharp rock in the fog somewhere on the coast of Maine, and I might very easily die of it.**

Without that vivid context Chris was willing to live with the four bars or however it was that S&T reported on receiving, so he might be a better judge than I about the rest of it. We each have had several versions of our respective choice and we each think ours has improved a lot from the early times. He does extensive trip planning with the software in a much more detailed way than I do; he's done a round trip of the country in a big RV and was within a few hours of his predicted schedule the pretty much the entire way.

I'm used to driving around with the stuff too now. Automotive GPS systems know and care about roads, which looked at from my marine perspective looks like "yeah, and we'll cheat and stick you on a road even though that's not what the fix says [and you'll die horribly]" but really means they can tolerate poor reception and inaccurate fixes by including assumptions about where you plausibly might be. They almost always are right, and if they get it wrong the consequences aren't dire. It's a good trade, and I've gotten used to it. Every once in a while when I start my Garmin Nuvi 750 (high-end machine of its time, excellent in practically every way, gets power through the cradle which only their absolute fanciest machine does now, $50 on ebay) it picks up a position one block away on the adjoining street to my house, and instead of breaking into a cold sweat I just shake my finger at it and say tsk tsk.

Yours, David


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