2010-03-13:
Today we drove from Possum Kingdom to Thousand Trails at Baylanding in Bridgeport TX. There, we will re-stock provisions, LP gas, get our snail-mail, and repair the water inlets damaged in Possum Kingdom.
We have been using a Garmin GPS unit since 2005. The satisfaction with the performance of this GPS varies depending on who you ask, me or my wife.
I think the unit works pretty good. It has its “usability” issues, but nothing that can't be overcome.
My wife thinks that the unit is a piece of crap that usually takes us through wild idiotic routes.
The best example of such cases is the time when we were trying to get to Chaco in New Mexico and we end up in some dead end dirt road in an Indian reservation.
Well, today was another victory for my Wife's campaign against GPS navigation, fist clenched in the air with her trusty paper maps.
When I asked the GPS to use the “fastest” route to get to our next destination, the unit decided to take us through some narrow twisty roads, that sometimes were parallel to perfectly good 4 lane highways.
We had to make some hairy “U” turns to correct direction when we grew increasingly distrustful with the GPS chosen roads. In the end we got there but with a GPS tarnished record.
Today's score, Vicky: 1 - GPS:0
Monday, March 15, 2010
Vicky vs. GPS round 5
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4 comments:
Hard to beat good ole Rand McNally or Auto Club maps. I've been quite happy with my Garmin though. It seems to know the good routes almost all the time.
I think we found yesterday why the gps is not giving us good routes.
In the past, I have been planning routes in a Windows XP computer and the Windows Garmin software.
Now that I have a Mac, the Garmin gps unit is not honoring the routes outlined in the Garmin software for the Mac.
We are switching back to the windows laptop for route planning.
Even with the Windows computer, the GPS tooks on some odd routes today. I think the paper map is winning all together!
Hey, you guys have the _exact_ same GPS unit that I do. We used it on our trip, although didn't rely heavily on it for routing. Most of our trips and day journeys had been planned through other sources (Internet research, paper maps, etc.) The fun thing was using the unit in Hawaii--try following the directions and you will literally be driving in the water. The road was about 50 feet in the water for most of the time. You couldn't count on the route as it kept RECALCULATING...Great fun... It's a phenomenal Backpacking/Routing GPS and I saved all the tracks from all of our journeys. One day I'll be able to replay it and go on a virtual tour of the trip...
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