I'm currently looking to upgrade my Thinkpad-plus-wired-mouse-GPS solution for a better on-the-road sanity while taking off some of the pains of having the passenger carry a Thinkpad on the lap.
I used a Garmin on a recent car rental from Avis, and found it to be great - the rental GPS came without manuals, CDs, computer installations, etc - yet we were able to hook it up, navigate, find things out on the fly, and safely return.
Hence the wish to buy one of these nifty things. Granted, they are nothing compared to the sheer muscle power of a gigabyte capacity installation of Microsoft Streets and Trips, with a USB mouse GPS plugged in - but its much, much more convenient to handle a small, dedicated unit that can run on batteries for hours, than to handle a 4.5-lb IBM Thinkpad that hardly lasts an hour on batteries, and a single fall results in $2000 spent for a replacement.
First stop - Magellan 4040. No good reason other than the local Costco carrying this in stock in their brick-and-mortar location. As it happened, I was going on a trip from Long Island, NY to Luray, VA over the weekend, so how better to try out a new GPS!
Here's where I shall jump - instead of listing all the features, which you will get just about everywhere - starting from Garmin's website - I'll jump forward to after my return from the trip, and list all the annoyances this provided. Please note, my experience with GPS devices - as mentioned already - include a Garmin rental piece, a Microsoft Streets and Trips and laptop solution, and this Magellan 4040.
First - the bluetooth. If you are buying this and not the other comparable models, you are probably comparing this one feature, since all the other features seem about the same on paper. I recently got the
BlueAnt Supertooth Light as a bluetooth solution to a hands-free kit in my car. That, I am happy to say, comes with a lot of good features - clear voice, good volume, good reception, simple design. The Magellan - some pro's, some con's. Pro's include the ability to dial using an on-screen keyboard, view the address book, and so on - pretty much anything that involves a display, since the Supertooth has none. The cons - clarity. Yes, clarity - the one thing that you are really looking for in a bluetooth speakerphone / hands free. While the voice cracks, cackles and breaks on the Magellan, its crystal clear on the Supertooth. So much for that.
Now, the GPS itself. I should mention, at this point, that I am not really interested in looking at pictures, watching movies, or listening to mp3's through my GPS. I treat the GPS as a life saving device - or, at the very least, a sanity saving one - specially at the end of long road trips. For my regular commute, or a trip to the local grocery store, I can handle it myself just as well. Plus, the overhead involved in the less-than-perfect society we live in - take the GPS out, install it, drive, take it down, take down the windshield mount as well, pack them out of sight, make sure to not leave the telltale circles on the windshield from the mount - makes it just less trouble to drive away than use a GPS for local trips.
So, what I am really looking for, is something I depend on as a lifeline when I really need help - unknown roads, middle of the night, highway-hopping directions, etc. New Yorkers in general would understand - if you have to drive from Westchester/White Plains to Queens/Long Island, you have to hop on and off a bunch of highways in less than 5 miles - Hutchinson, I-95, I-695, Throgs Neck Bridge, Cross Island - each of them filled to the brim with friendly New York drivers, and the entrance-to-exits requiring several lane changes. The changes happen so fast, for anyone but the commuter on these roads, following printed directions - even with the help of a passenger reading aloud - is rather difficult. I was hoping the GPS would solve this.
Well, guess what - first, this thing is much less sensitive than the GPS mouse I had hooked on the laptop. It takes a good quarter to half mile of travel on the wrong road (at 55 mph) before the GPS realizes you are off track and starts recomputing. Pretty bad, in my opinion.
Recomputing takes a while, which I would somewhat expect - I am not complaining here, but I am not impressed either.
Now comes the best part - in the middle of all these maneuvers, right in the thick of things, the GPS decides to go out for a reboot! That was hilarious! Had I been in a worse mood, I would have thrown this out the window right then and there.
In my 2 days of testing, the GPS rebooted about twice, so its possible I had a lemon. Of course, this got returned to Costco as soon as I had a chance.
Proceeding with my trip - to get to Luray, Virginia from New York, NY, you can take one of 2 routes - the busy ride all the way down on I-95 / New Jersey Turnpike, 7 lanes of angry drivers and 3 downtowns - Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC (not counting New York) - or the western route via I-78 / I-81, where you are out of civilization pretty much 30 minutes on I-78, and have speed limits as high as 70 in places. Try it out in Google maps - 10001 to 22835. Yes, most automated systems will probably recommend the I-95 route, using the same brilliance that thinks 34th street in Manhattan has an average speed the same as the rest of I-495, ignoring the entire population of New York City. Still, on something like Google maps, or Streets and Trips, you can click to create a stop somewhere on I-78 or I-81, which will take you along the path you prefer. But do you know the exact address of such a stop? Not me. Unfortunately, that's what you need to force a GPS like this to re-calculate a route based on your preferences.
Oh - the difference of I-95/route 66 west vs I-78/I-81/66 east to get to 22835 from 10001 is 321 miles vs 333 miles, 5 hours 38 min vs 5 hours 46 min, as per Google maps. I took the 78/81 route going south, and the 95 route coming up. When I was stuck at 2mph on the DC beltway, or the Baltimore downtown, or going through the many accident zones in Delaware/New Jersey, I was really cursing myself for trying to save those 12 miles / 8 minutes on the 300+ mile /5+ hour drive.
The initial attempt to get me on I-95 was not much of a concern. I took I-78 instead, and was expecting it to recalculate - since I was on I-78 already, traveling at a rather good clip. Here's where the 4040 failed to live up to my expectations. Going west on I-78 through Jersey, it was hell bent on getting me to I-95 - it gave me U-turns, tried to get me to go into random exits and travel some 10 miles on absolute residential roads in order to get back on I-95. Not very intuitive, I'd say. What was it expecting - a U-turn on a highway is as fast as smalling the handbrake and spinning the car around?
Enough gripes on the navigation. Now for the much touted TTS - Text to Speech. Reviews compared TTS and non TTS models to heaven and hell. Some were really impressed with the added convenience of the street names spoken out loud. Note to the new researcher in the field - non-TTS units with voice instructions will announce "Right turn in 100 yards" or something similar. TTS units will announce "Right turn in 100 yards to Elm Street". At least, that's what the demos and ads look like.
Impressive? Not so fast. This is good for local roads - the advantage being that the driver does not have to take his.her eyes off the road, and can listen to the road name to turn into. For highways on the North East? Its hell. The part that is not mentioned is that TTS - Text to Speech - is literal. Too literal. So when you have to, say, merge into the Delaware Bridge - which reads something like "N I-295 / Del Mem Br / NJ Tpke" on the GPS directions, the TTS will read it (in monotone - words spaced equally) as "en eye 295 slash del mem ber slash enjay tipke'. In some places, all you can really make out is the "slash" - everything else comes out as garbage. The "tipke" was the best part here - no way the driver will be able to avoid taking a look at the GPS to see what the tipke really is! Why pay more for this experimental feature?
On the smaller side - "Exit POIs" are pretty useless unless you are on a major highway - such a limited access feature should not take up a top level menu icon. In the middle of a route, you can not search for POIs (e.g. restaurants at your destination - to make a reservation while still en route) - you have to cancel the current trip, then search for restaurants. I could not readily bring up the screen that shows my current direction and speed - this must be available, just not as intuitive as the Garmin I tried.
So, overall, pretty disappointing. This went back the next chance I had. I would try Garmin next - but if this is what handhelds are at right now, I don't think this is much of an improvement over having to carry the Thinkpad along.
