I *mostly* heart my GPS

This past Memorial Day weekend, I went on a long, awesome five-day road trip. One of the things that made it go really smoothly was the fact that we bought a cheap GPS system. Now, I know that many people have these in their cars, but I am totally new to this technology, so this is exciting stuff for me. Here's how my GPS works: the GPS itself is this hockey-puck like thing with a USB cable coming out of it. I hung the GPS on that thing above your head in your car that you hang onto when you're scared, because that way it can connect to the satellite more easily.

The USB cable goes into your laptop, which is loaded with GPS software. When the software connects to the satellite, it sees exactly where you are on the road to within, like, 15 feet. You can literally see yourself driving on the map. Then, you pick a destination and type in the address, and it tells you (w/ voice prompts) all the maneuvers you need to get to your destination, as you are driving, with plenty of time to react.

Is this something I bought that I love? No. Unlike this and this, the GPS is something that I bought that I merely *like*. But I do like it a lot. Here are the specific things that I like:

· It optimizes your route to get you there the fastest, or in the shortest distance (whichever you choose)

· You can elect to stick to mainly highways, or mainly side roads or you can have it optimize your trip using whatever makes the most sense.

· While you are driving, you can search for amenities (food, lodging, gas) that are near wherever you happen to be, and then get directions to those things. It even provides phone numbers for these places. You can also find these things around your destination so you can plan for what you need before you get there.

· It’s surprisingly accurate. I found it much more reliable than Mapquest, in fact, as far as map information and also how it knew what side of the road to be on when you needed to enter or exit a highway, or what side of the road a business was on.

· You always know exactly how far you are away from your target, and about how long it will take to get there.

Here are the things I did NOT like about it:

· The satellite cuts out constantly. Fortunately, it would usually come right back, but when I tried to navigate in a downtown area for the first time with this thing, we just got really lost. It would lose the connection, and then recalculate the route based on where we now were, and by the time we started following the new directions, it would cut out again. And so on… There is a way to deal with this though, I found. The software has a “directions” tab which lists all the directions on your route, so if you lose the satellite you can go by that, much like a mapquest printout.

· The amenities database is two years old. This means a lot of important stuff isn’t in there (like new Starbucks stores!!!), and it also means some of these places are no longer in business (which we found to be the case a couple of times)

· You need someone to sit with this thing in the passenger seat and navigate. There is no way a driver can blindly go by this system; not only because of the problem with the satellite cutting out, but because the GPS will get confused if you are in a parking lot. It assumes you are on the road when you are driving around in the parking lot, and if you happen to be going against traffic, it thinks you are on the other side of the road, and the directions it gives you will send you in the opposite direction that you need to be. (It will, however, prompt you to u-turn as soon as it sees you are on the wrong track)

Overall, I found this to be a great purchase, and for only $129 at Best Buy. This is definitely a poor man’s GPS, but it totally made our lives easier while driving in a bunch of states we’ve never seen before. One last note: If you don’t have a power inverter for your laptop that plugs into your cigarette lighter, this is a MUST. Best buy had one for $50, but knowing better I dropped by Wal-Mart and bought the very same one for $30. (but if you think ahead--unlike me--you can find it cheaper on the internet)