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Calling all GPS geeks
Mar. 16th, 2005 06:34 pmAs I'm about to make another roadtrek soon, it occurred to me that having a GPS might be a nifty thing. Pity I didn't think of it sooner so I'd have more time to research the topic, so instead I call upon y'all for assistance.
Mainly what I want is something good for road navigation (multi-state US and probably Canada, so autorouting features would be good), as well as for strolling the wilds. Connectivity to PDA or laptop would be spiffy; in fact, I was considering just getting a USB or bluetooth dongle, but it sounds like PDA/computer software is, surprisingly, less advanced than that embedded in dedicated handhelds. I'll gladly be proven wrong on that front. Plus, most handhelds seem to have USB connectivity, so I could always hook one up to something with a bigger screen later on if I wanted. Although I don't currently have a working PDA, I'd be connecting to either Symbian (preferred) or PalmOS; for the laptop I currently run OpenBSD, but may add MacOSX to my arsenal in the future.
Right now the most likely candidates seem to be a Magellan SporTrek Color and a Garmin 76CS. Color displays are just more readable IMO, and having a compass would be most handy. I think the Garmin has more memory, but I'm hearing that the SporTrek is more accurate and the compass less annoying to use (though its battery cover is a bit cheesy). For plain dongles, the Fortuna Clip-On seems to have the lead, but I have no clue about preferred software packages.
I'm also getting a notion that SiRF is somehow preferred over NMEA or other brand-proprietal data formats, though I'm not sure why. Anyway, if anyone has comments/corrections on the above or info to add or whatever, I'd appreciate it.
Mainly what I want is something good for road navigation (multi-state US and probably Canada, so autorouting features would be good), as well as for strolling the wilds. Connectivity to PDA or laptop would be spiffy; in fact, I was considering just getting a USB or bluetooth dongle, but it sounds like PDA/computer software is, surprisingly, less advanced than that embedded in dedicated handhelds. I'll gladly be proven wrong on that front. Plus, most handhelds seem to have USB connectivity, so I could always hook one up to something with a bigger screen later on if I wanted. Although I don't currently have a working PDA, I'd be connecting to either Symbian (preferred) or PalmOS; for the laptop I currently run OpenBSD, but may add MacOSX to my arsenal in the future.
Right now the most likely candidates seem to be a Magellan SporTrek Color and a Garmin 76CS. Color displays are just more readable IMO, and having a compass would be most handy. I think the Garmin has more memory, but I'm hearing that the SporTrek is more accurate and the compass less annoying to use (though its battery cover is a bit cheesy). For plain dongles, the Fortuna Clip-On seems to have the lead, but I have no clue about preferred software packages.
I'm also getting a notion that SiRF is somehow preferred over NMEA or other brand-proprietal data formats, though I'm not sure why. Anyway, if anyone has comments/corrections on the above or info to add or whatever, I'd appreciate it.
