navigation systems

My wife and I just enjoyed a long holiday weekend with my in-laws. The visit required a, now routine, trip of roughly 180 miles each way. It's a pretty easy drive yet we will still plug in our GPS receiver, just in case we get held up in traffic and want to find a substitute route, quickly.

This is aided now by free(*) traffic notice and avoidance. It has both hit and missed because it is dependent upon traffic condition reporting being timely and actually available for the roads we're on. (*Free means advertiser supported, but the -one- tiny repeat ad I've ever seen pop up is remarkably unobtrusive and a very easily accepted price to pay for the service.)

Truth be told, the unit is one of two new ones I bought recently; a matching pair for each of our cars. The free traffic feature was a big attraction, and the wide screen and higher speed refresh rate of the touchscreen are appreciated. These two new units replace an older, smaller model that still performed like new but did not offer the traffic service.

I also like that the little devices seem to have been actually engineered to be used in cars with people driving them.

You see, on the trip home I happened to notice quite a number of other drivers using GPS systems. The sun had set and the dark sky helped make other GPSes stand out, both portable like mine and integrated into the dashboards. I am a bigger fan of the former. Not only are they cheaper and easier to update, but they are portable and far more useful when traveling... particularly when in a rented car in a very unfamiliar place. That expensive big screen option in your own dash does you no good in the long-term garage at the airport back home.

What I noticed that evening in the passenger seat was another silver bullet for the cheaper/better portables; contrast. Perhaps it's my chemotherapy making me sensitive to light, but I never really have liked lots of bright light close to my eyes when I am driving at night. I can see outside the car much better when the lights inside are dimmed. If I am driving, seeing what's outside the car is more important.

The smaller screen of the portables is probably one of those characteristics that the owners of the big in-dash screens coo back to themselves after paying so much more. But that big screen is friggin' bright! In one car, a Cadillac no less, the big fat screen cast so much light on the occupants on the car I thought one of their doors was open. Meanwhile, the smaller screened units out there did not scream for so much attention.

And that's really the point of a GPS receiver, right? Ask it to tell you where to go and it will politely and concisely point the way. At the point that a driving aid distracts drivers from the road, a line has been crossed.

This is where I mention my preference for Garmin and Navteq maps as well. The maps are simple, almost cartoon-like, and presented in, here's that word again, high contrast that I find very easy to understand at a quick glance and then my eyes are back outside the car. I've seen the maps from TomTom and they're okay. The el cheapo brand GPS receivers... are cheap for a reason.

Garmin is not the perfect manufacturer though. I am not happy with their -vast- array of models, most of which just seem to differ on whether or not they offer an (uneccessary) MP3 player or can play pictures from your camera cards. I am also not happy with their policy of planned obsolecense with each model year. Updates are not free after a certain point in time, but the costs of new data are now close if not greater than the cost of some of their new -hardware-. I was perfectly happy with my traffic-less model except that fresh maps were priced higher than I felt was reasonable.

Hmm... this post should have been more cynical. ;)