Wednesday, July 12, 2006

GPS

Getting Lost yesterday led to my big ticket purchase yesterday: a Tom Tom 510 GPS device. You literally take it out of the box and it starts to work. It is nice that there are no associated subscription fees unless you opt for the "Plus" services. These services are neat, but require the use of a Bluetooth enabled phone as your data connection. One of the plus services is alerting you to traffic congestion in select cities (my area is one of them). However, since I do not own a compatible cell phone and my drive time to work is 5 minutes, I will not be using it for that.

I can see this gadget becoming a new favorite. No additional fees is an incredible plus, and I just realized how much I come to accept that any new device will have associated subscription fees. The manual is lacking, however, the device is fairly intutive and in no time, I was plotting a course to my friend's new house.

In comparing GPS systems to each other, they all seem to have similar features, but the Tom Tom had two that I really liked. The first was the 3D display. Instead of getting an overhead perspective, Tom Tom draws the map from your perspective, with your route going off into the horizon. This really helps with situation yourself with the device. The second thing feature I like is that you can download celebrity voices, such as Mr T. or John Cleese ("Turn Left Fool. I pity the Fool that gets lost").

Perhaps now, I can get to Borders.

5 comments:

Todd R. Vick said...

Sound like you also need to purchase a "Bass-O-Matic!"

Paul said...

"Perhaps now, I can get to Borders."

Or better yet, Red Robin! Seriously, wouldn't it be cool if you could pre-program it with 'favorites' that would show up no matter where you go... Borders... Starbucks... Red Robin...etc!

Chuck said...

I thought it "ought" to be able to do that. You have the ability to create your own "Points of Interest" categories (i.e. Starbucks) and then you add specific locations to the POI Category. To me, this is worthless. I want it to do POI based on name matches so as I am driving down the highway, I can be alerted to a nearby Starbucks

Rick said...

was just thinking same thing, chuck. driving down the road and you hear, "turn left for starbucks." - sweet.

Chuck said...

Rick - I am going to do a full review on the device as soon as I get situated back home. I want to download the John Cleese celebrity voice, but I am sure it would get tiresome after awhile.