portable or wired?

Hi again,

I am sorry I am comming up again with a similar question, but I want to make sure I am going for the right thing.

What benefits does the wired in navigator have above the portable ones?

If I may ask: Which one does a better job as far as reception of the satelites to show exact location of car, clearity of map, bigger screen, better voice direction and louder speaker - The ones that is wired like Pinoeer and VDO or the portable ones like Garmin and Magellan?

Thanks for your help as always!

Erina

Reply to
Erina Mashes
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The wired in ones have bigger displays and typically have more user friendly features such as voice recognition and large buttons. The downside is that they cost up to 10 times more to obtain. They also cost more to update. I've heard that the DVD updates can cost up to $300. They obviously have the downside of not being removeable. What happens when you switch vehicles temporarily or go bike riding?

The portable ones are convenient so when you rent cars, you can take it with you. You don't even have to be in a car. They're a lot cheaper. They're also cheaper to update. I believe you can have free updates from the web. The downside is that they're smaller in size and hence have smaller displays. They tend to get dropped or get broken more. They also have a limited amount of space. They can't hold the whole Unites States for example. If you're planning a trip, you'd have to delete everything else just to make room for your route and destination.

I have 3 friends that have the portables and love them. They never experience any problems with them. I also know 2 others that have the ones built-in their cars. They love them too. The only thing they hate is the "highway robbery" (no pun intended) for getting an updated DVD disc. I believe that one's budget will determine more of which you should choose.

Reply to
Viperkiller

My Garmin Ique 3600 PDA can hold the entire North American cities map if equipped with a 1gig SD card. I have a 512mb card that I can easily preload for just about any trip I can think of. Since I travel with my notebook computer, I can reprogram the map database to handle any half of North American cities, towns and surrounding areas in a few minutes of my time and under a half hour of the computer's.

The 2" x 3" screen works well for me as I have it mounted next to the windshield pillar so it's a lot easier to see than one mounted at the radio site. With turn by turn voice prompts, it isn't necessary to do much reading anyway. Map updates after the original free one will be around $100 when I feel the need. The A&W restaurant list is sadly out of date.

I can also go for a walk in the woods without worrying about getting back to the car. It also cost less than the last color Palm PDA I bought that didn't have a GPS function. My wife's last PDA did get broken but she let the kids play games on it.

Pat

Reply to
Greywolf

The portable units let you take them on a plane to an unfamiliar city where they can be very useful, the wired units require you to take your car on the plane, and this is seldom very convenient or cheap. Bush gets to take his car, but he has an entire plane to himself, so there is more space in the cargo hold. My guess is that you travel Coach, like the rest of us, so taking your own car is out of the question.

Collecting satellite signals is not generally a function of the installation method. I used a hand held GPS to do everything you are trying to get an automotive unit to do, but the hand-helds do not have a vioce telling you to turn at the next corner, you have to actually look at the unit to figure that out. Showing where you car is on a map is more a function of the mapping software than the GPS unit. That is, the GPS is going to know where your car is within the size of the car - clearly an accuracy that would be sufficient for your needs - but accurately placing yoru car on the map is a function of the mapping software itself. If the GPS say your car is here, then you can be sure that's where your car is. If the map doesn't show your car in the right place, the map is the error not the GPS. I understand your question, but the mapping software and the GPS are not the same thing. They are bundled together, and the mapping software is a critical part of the equation, but the GPS and the maps can be separated. Frankly, my limited experience is that the maps will not be accurate in new areas, but in older and well established areas the maps are pretty good.

I once sold a GPS system for businesses to track where their trucks were going, and a carpet cleaning company would find their trucks were visiting places that the map showed as the middle of a field, when in reality the location was a new (less than 5 years old) business park or a residential neighborhood. This kind of error is from the maps, not from the GPS.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

Hi Viperkiller (is that your real name?),

I am also questioning if the portable navigation systems works well all the time as the wired ones especialy in a city as New York where big buildings can interfere with the satelite spoting?

thanks, Erina

Reply to
Erina Mashes

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your input and enlightening me on this. My question would now be if the handheld or say the ones that are removable easily are working as good as the wired ones as far as the GPS always getting the sgnal from the satellite and if the computer works fast enough to remap and rescale?

Thanks!

>
Reply to
Erina Mashes

Apples and oranges... Permanent car units can have a better antenna and get weaker signals, but you can get external magnetic antennas for the handheld units, too - but if the car is driven into a parking structure all bets are off, neither type is going to get a signal.

Some permanent car units work on 'inertial navigation' as well as the satellite signals - they connect to both of the rear wheel ABS sensors, counting the pulses from each side to sense distance and turns, and can show and record a pretty good estimate of where the vehicle is even while they can't get a GPS signal in a tunnel or parking structure. And when they can get a signal again, the map 'snaps' to the exact location.

Though I don't know if it can tell forward travel from backwards - if you were bound and determined to confuse the system you probably could... ;-)

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

Sure, I think.

My handheld was the Garmin eMap, a model that isn't available anymore. I used it for offroad travel, and it got me from somewhere in the middle of nowhwere across 50+ of miles of open desert to somewhere else that was on the edge of nowhere, but had the freeway running through the middle of town.

I suppose an automotive unit might have the advantage over the handhelds because it could have an external antenna that you would mount by a magnet to the roof or somewhere like that, and the handhelds will have an internal antenna so you have to keep it on the dashboard. But, it will acquire the satellites in under a minute and display your location on the fly.

I can't help but think that a nav system in a car would be best if it was of the type that one could take from car to car. Frankly, unless you are in sales and have to go all over the place and find new places all of the time, a nav system is an expensive toy that one soon tires of. For people that get in the car everyday and go to the same office, the nav system is of very little value or benefit. If you are travelling by car extensively and frequently, and go to different places all of the time, then a nav system can be an invaluable tool with benefits that can't be measured here. And, if your travels have you flying for several hours a week, and driving in strange places even more, then a nav system is a great benefit, but in this case, you would want a handheld that you could carry in your overnight bag.

Handheld GPS units are one of those tools where you get more when you pay more money. A cheap GPS will just piss you off, and an expensive GPS that has no features will piss you off even more. I think that if you set your budget at about $200, you can get an excellent handheld unit that will get you to Grandma's house and back, and show you dozens of side trips that you could be taking to make the trip more fun. These units come with mapping software that you can load onto your computer and chart where you have been, and plan where you want to go. My little unit had the eating spots along the interstates all loaded in. I could be looking for McDs, and the unit would tell me that there was one a few exits in front of me or if I looked too late, the exit that I had just passed. You can plug in an address, and the unit will show you right where it is. You can even determine if it is on the north or south side of the street. I saw a vehicle based tracking system for a commercial truck once that could show the dispatcher which door of the loading dock his truck was at, many personal GPS systems have the same kind of detail. I could zoom in with my handheld and it would show me walking around in my backyard. In theory, I could survey my property and extract the data to plot on a map.

The automotive based units do all of the same things as the handhelds, but they generally have larger displays and a voice prompt. But, is the display and the prompt worth a thousand dollars or more? And, if you pony up the extra grand, will you be happy leaving your GPS at the airport when you travel to a distant city?

Here's an idea. Buy a handheld this week before you commit to the new car purchase. Explore your area for a few weeks before you buy a new car. You can see if the GPS is useful to you or not, then have it added to the new car. Keep this unit for travelling, or give it to a neighbor kid as a graduation present. You can do this test with any of the mid-range units from Garmin or Madgellan. I don't think you need the high end unit, and the low end units will be frustrating. And, if you get a GPS built into your car, the price of the tester unit won't be a problem to give it to one of your friend's kids, or to save it in a drawer waiting for your next trip.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

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