Laptop, GPS map travelling

Hey... Thats exactly what i think I want....but I already have the laptop...

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WayneAlways Out'N About

Any Laptop from a Pent 350 up...
Pretty much any GPS on the market now..
Oziexplorer software
Maps that you get on CD are all ancient, not worth the $$

Driving from a map on a laptop is slower than waitin for paint to dry...

I prefer paper maps, Work out sections, and just drive them <<---- YMMV...

Julie,

The best thing you can do is to do a site search of this site. Your questions have been raised 100's of times and there are lots of good answers to be had.

In short you will need a laptop new or second hand, a GPS, Garmin or Magellan, Oziexplorer Mapping Software( you can buy from the shop here on this site), and maybe a Pure Sinewave Inverter to run your laptop from the vehicle battery. From there on it is a big learning curve unless of course you have a young brain and understand these things :-) Have fun.........

Cheers,Willem
Little Dip Cons Park S.A.

Jule,
Oziexplorer software ($135) and the Auslig 1:250,000 series maps on CD ($90) are the essentials. After that, any GPS, any laptop and a cable linking the two. You can't go wrong. The other software you may consider is Magellan DiscoverAus ($245). This is more a street directory of all Roads Streets and Tracks. Needs Magellan GPS.Bob

hi jule , we are doin the same set up ,, new garmin street pilot 111 cmon out in april with new maps,,, & laptop* acer* we are going to purchase ,, just before trip in septemberk to keep up with times (look up garmin web site ) cheers rather be fishing

Well, as I sit in front of a computor in my work, I don't think I want to watch one for hours when I'm travelling through Australia on my couple of trips a year, to us we want a break from that.

What we do is plan out our trip with raster maps, print out all the necessary maps and bind them into a book, we also plot with GPS Cordinates all the major points we have to see, major intersections etc. We have a dash mounted GPS and basically check every now and then that we are in the right place.

We do carry our laptop with the raster maps in case of emergency and it take only a couple of minutes to pull it out and check exactly where we are rather than constabntly follow on the screen. We also use the laptop to burn CDs of our photos every couple of days.

Bruce

Julie,

I have a Magellen Meridian Marine with a 256MB SD card.
The card holds all of the maps from Discover Australia ie all of OZ.
I also have a 64MB SD card which holds the Oz 4wd Tracks.

The maps are the latest stuff from Hema maps. ie the "tracks" CD was driven by the people at Hema and mapped for Magellan!!

I leave the GPS on the whole time as it's good to check speed on the GPS as 4WD speedos always over estimate speed by about 5 to 10km/hr. I've gone past speed traps at 125km/hr on the speedo and 115 on the GPS and never got caught. Plus is nice to know where you are all the time, but don't stare at it while driving.

I have whole trips saved on the GPS in the form of Routes and tracking. You can do this via the GPS or computer link.

In my opinion you don't need a laptop if you have a good GPS with upgradeable memory.

The only reason we would use the laptop is to store photos.
Hope this helps.
Marty

HAVE A LOOK AT gpsoz.com BUY A POCKET PC AND A CABLE TO HOOK UP YOUR GPS TO THE POCKET PC, OziExploer PC AND CE, SOME MAPS YOU USE YOUR PC TO PLAN YOUR TRIP DOWN LOAD TO YOUR _Permanent_Painted_Coatings.aspx AND JUST DRIVE NO NEED FOR THE LAPTOP AND LESS YOUR AS MAD AS ME
REGARDS RICHARD

Julie,

What you get really depends on what you want to do. I'm currently using a Meridian Platinum linked to a laptop with Ozi Explorer. It works a treat and although I carry paper maps and am comfortable using them; I'd never go back.

The reason I went for this combination is that I like to get out of the car every now and again. The Meridian lets me do that. It also give me a level of redundancy - if the laptop dies mid-trip I can work with the GPS alone.

If it wasn't for the walking, I'd have got a bluetooth GPS or one that plugs directly into a slot of the laptop - one less thing to worry about...

A lot of people use handheld computers. They have a couple of advantages - they are smaller and, importantly, have less moving parts but I reckon the little screen might be a bit of a limiting factor although I've not tried one.

One of the major advantages I've found with the laptop is that it gets Linda, my wife, more involved in the trip whilst the Meridian lets me "do it alone" if I'm one-up or if Linda's not interested in playing along. The other real plus is that we can make changes to our planned trip on the fly when we hit problems washed our roads. Sure you can do that with a paper map too but its much easier using Ozi Explorer.

GPS Oz are a great source of components and advice. Have a chat to them.

Thanks for the help..certainly gives me a better idea of what to look into..Thanks again..Julie