material world: tthe 21st century

[forgotten_aria]

I decided to take another step into this century... er... I mean I found a lame excuse to buy a new toy, and get a GPS for the car (especially since there was a $100 off sale until January 5 on the one I was looking at.)

I haven't had a chance to go driving with it yet, but I'm a bit doubious. It seems to take a long time to enter in your destination and when tried to make it take MY route to Ottawa, it was very unhelpful. I asked it to go through cornwall, and it took me into Quebec and then back down to Cornwall. You could avoid certain cities, but not whole provinces. There is supposed to be an option to make a multi=leg trip, but I can't find it on my unit, despite the help pages saying it's there. But what I really want it for is getting to addresses I don't know, and it will be a bit before I can test that out. Getting to watch my self go to Canada was just going to be a silly use of it.

I'll have to wait to see how I like it. Luckily I didn't pay a HUGE amount, but I did pay enough that I hope it's actually useful and helps me when I get lost.

Comments

[jadia.livejournal.com]

I used a GPS for the first time over xmas break. It was kind of interesting - a bit not what I expected. It was mostly right, except in NYC, where the tall buildings would cause it to think I was often one street over. And then it wanted me to take an on-ramp to something, but the on-ramp was blocked off by cones, so I had to take a detour.

I think GPS's are cool, but no substitute for experience/knowledge of the area, which I think is how I had thought of them before I tried one.