Tools of the Trade: GPS

I used to be a big fan of Mapquest. When I first heard about it a few years ago it was god-sent for people like me, you know, no sense of direction. Make no mistake, I could read a map. Just couldn’t remember one street from the next nor did I have the patience to try to find the shortest route. Mapquest helped me avoid these things by providing the turn-by-turn instructions. It even let me choose between faster and shorter routes. All I had to do was to look at the instructions every now and then, remember the street name and whether to turn left or right. Knowing the distance between streets sometimes helped.

Despite all the benefits of internet mapping services like Mapquest, Yahoo Maps or Google, I soon found that there was one thing they could not do for me. If I made a wrong turn somewhere as we are all apt to do, I could not find directions on how to get back on the right track. Now this is not too bad on city streets but on a freeway it can be an issue. I still needed to have a map!

Enter the GPS! The perfect solution for most situations you will encounter. I started out on the lighter side, opting for the Garmin Street Pilot i3. Despite what I have heard, I had some reservations about using a GPS. The GPS may not function as advertised and I did not want to be tied to an expensive unit I could not use or appreciate. Needless to say I was sold. The Street Pilot does a pretty good job of giving turn-by-turn instructions, arrival time among others. When I chose the Street pilot I knew the small screen size (1.3 x 1.7 in) might become an issue later but I figured, I needed to hear the instructions, not read it. As I gained more experienced with the GPS, I found situations where you did need to take a quick glance at the screen and read some of the information displayed, like street names. Now while doing so in the daytime was not much of an issue, the black and white screen was hard to read at night. I also learned that the turn-by-turn instructions can be confusing when you have two or more exits close to each other. Thankfully by this time newer, more advanced GPS had come down in price and was now more affordable to the masses, like myself.

The TomTom Go 720 had a 4.3 in colored screen that is easy to read. I could have gone for the Garmin nuvi 760 and stayed with more familiar territory. After all they had very similar features. Both had touch screen controls, same screen size, FM transmitters, blue tooth wireless connections, MP3 player, and photo viewer. Battery life for both GPS models where similar. Where they did differ is in the map providers. TomTom uses maps from TeleAtlas while Garmin gets its maps from NAVTEQ. What made me choose TomTom over the more popular Garmin? It is the TomTom MapShare, feature that lets users share map corrections with each other. I haven’t really used this yet. The last time I checked there were no map corrections in my area but I think that I may find this feature useful...eventually.

I do have a little regret going for the TomTom. Go 720 instead of the Garmin nuvi 760. I’m sure that both do a good job getting you to where you are going but the TomTom tends to stick to highways and freeways when going through city streets might actually be both faster AND shorter. Garmin does not, or at least the i3 did not. Oh, and another thing. When approaching your destination, the Go 720 tells me that I am arriving at my destination. The Garmin goes so far as to tell me that it is on the right side of the street, or on the left, a little extra information that I now miss.

Hmm, maybe this is a situation where I should be trying out the MapShare feature.