20 November 2006

Marriage Salvation: Or, Never Have to Ask for Directions Again!

We have a new toy -- the TomTom GO910. It's a portable GPS navigation system.

We also call it a Marriage Salvation because without a navigation system, our marriage might not survive driving in Europe. (We learned that the hard way when we rented a car without navigation and then drove to Germany. I won't go into the ugly details, but it's really best that we have one.)

I've been playing with it and am very happy with our selection. With a new navigation system its always best to use it in areas you know. That way you learn how to use it before it becomes necessary. Nothing's worse than fumbling with a navigation system while driving on unknown roads.

The Garmin was also good, but we liked that the TomTom has a hard drive that connects directly to our computer to download additional software. Plus, it came preloaded with the maps for the US, Canada and Europe. Perfecto!

By the way, if you are also considering this purchase, we HATED the Magellan. We've used it a few times when we rented Hertz cars. They call it the "Never Lost System." I've dubbed it the "Never Found." Magellan's maps are confusing, the directions are unclear and the GPS system frequently loses your exact position, which makes it very difficult to navigate.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

after a while I never had trouble in the navigation to Europe. But I guess that's what biking and observing comes in handy.

We also had a gps but it seemed to give us wrong directions a lot.

Last August we rented a car in Switz and I'm proud to say really I never had any trouble. But I think I know Switzerland quite well...