I drove to Dublin on Saturday. I had a couple of small jobs to do and I was going to the Blogger meetup in the Market Bar afterwards.
Now I don’t know Dublin well at all so I was mighty relieved when a friend offered me the loan of a Sony GPS unit for the trip. It was the Sony NV-U50 and I would have been literally lost without it!
The user interface could definitely stand some work (it took me a good while to figure out how to get it to plot a course to a destination) but once underway and following its instructions, it brought me to the door of my venues flawlessly. I didn’t even have to think about where I was going.
Who else makes these in-car units and which ones are best (i.e. easiest to use)?
I’d love to take one to Spain in a couple of weeks when we go there on holidays
Having been lost on numerous continents I’ve found that Tom Tom make the most user friendly units but Garmin are the most accurate, Garmin units can be pretty user hostile though.
All are seriously overpriced.
http://www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk/
TomTom’s maps don’t appear to cover Ireland though.
Garmin Nuvi is apparently… da Bomb!
http://www.bytesurgery.com/gearedup/2006/01/garmin-nuvi-blog.html
Fancy that, I also have a website about it!!
http://www.findmeagps.com/specs/Car Navigation/
I used a Hertz rental car equipped with their Neverlost system last year on a 10 road-trip in the USA.
http://www.neverlost.com/
Worked perfect and an idiot proof interface.
Its now available in Europe
http://www.m-travel.com/news/2005/11/hertz_to_introd.html
Used Tomtom in the UK a few weeks ago and it worked fine but not as easily as the neverlost one.
Maybe you could blog for someone to sponsor your Satnav Tom
just kiddin
Garmin and Google Maps cached on my Sony Clie got me around the desert southwest of the States. No paper maps were unfolded, even while running through the LA basin. The driver made two wrong turns in 3940 miles of travel.
I actually rented a Garmin set from http://www.mysatnav.ie earlier this year for a week in France. It worked really really well. They don’t seem to rent units anymore, but check them out for offers. (no, I don’t have a relationship with them)
They don’t have maps for Ireland, take a long time to reacquire a signal after losing it forcing me to reboot units after leaving tunnels, and their points of interest db is usually out of date.
Three strikes against Tom Tom then.
Oh, and if you’ve a data plan with your Nokia you might be able to just buy a map card and a bluetooth GPS unit. Just like everything else there’s still little to no support for my S60 3rd edition phone yet.
I have a Garmin GPS-V in the Car. It works quite well as long at the mapping is up to date, though it is quite an old unit now. I assume you know that if you are bringing a laptop, you could, like Bernie says, use google maps, and I have a Serial GPS, thats sitting in the drawer here 😉
I rented a Garmin set from elephant car hire last year for my holiday in Italy. It was superbe!