what gps are people using

HI bob007, I have a navman pocket pc and find it invaluable in my city ventures,tells you when to turn and before the turn comes up. My previous navigator used to tell me after the turn,and then throw the towel in. The navman only goes crook if I make a wrong turn and tells me to execute a legal u turn.It has many programs of with I know not a lot about but am learning. Now I would not be without it great unit.Just my findings may help.

Regards BILLS

My Navman often tells me toturn right or left and mow down a farmers fence and go sailing through his paddock with no road in sight (told me to do it 6 times on the Young /Temora road) and also often tells me I am to go to the nearest road even though I am travelling on a road that lokks as though it hasn't changed for some years. Apart from that it's great but they are a long way from reliable and should be used as an aid. personal computer mapping software incorporated with GPS is the way to go I reckon.

I have a PDA - O2 XDA Mini using Tom Tom Mapping and a Holux GRS236 Bluetooth GPS. As I already owned the PDA my only outlay was the $120 for the GPS and somebody loaned me the software to test. Good for navigating roads but you can't work with it too easily once it's away from a known location/road etc.

Dear Bob
We have recently bought a explorist 400
This is a great little device,
However buying a GPS is the easy part, the hard part is working out how to use it
What with routes, tracks track logs , poi's , way points, all to be stored in different files on your GPS and then to be downloaded to your laptop or home computor.
Then you have to decide if you use the base map or an imported set of maps on your sim card.
This may take may months and much frustration to master.
Probabley the best use for these devices is a door stop.
Buy some good maps and a compass.

Good Luck
Jeff

Hi Bob,

I have an Acer n35 PDA running Co-Pilot for voice navigation in town and Ozi-Explorer for the bush but Ozi doesn't have voice prompts like Co-Pilot in mine but I think I can add them in but I haven't got that far with it yet.
I find the Acer and Co-Pilot to be very good and reliable with instructions, but it tends to stay on main roads when I know there is more direct minor roads to do the same thing only quicker. The PDA gives me more options like emails via a IR phone, word doc and more while I'm on the move without a computer as such.

Good luck as it is a minefield out there with so many options to blow your mind. Might be worth narrowing down your choices to just a couple of equivalent brands of GPS and see what the forum say in regards to one brand over another that you want. My needs may be very different to yours and my PDA may not suit you at all.

Regards, Trevor.

Hi Bob

It took me a while to work out what a GPS was all about and what was required to make it work, (easy when you know how) but I ended up buying a Garmin V which has a base map, this has the main roads built into the unit, then I bought the Garmin Mapsouce which is street level mapping, allowing me to see all the streets in Australia, but without Tun by Turn instruction, to do this you need to buy the Garmin City Navigator which costs a bit more.
The Garmin V is Ok, but a colour unit is alot better, Garmin have a good range of GPS units that will operate with turn by turn instruction, You can also buy the Tracks for Australia which you can also down load into your GPS, free on the net and it has lots of tracks.

I was also lucky enough to get a PDA which I have hooked up to my GPS and have moving maps, why have both, will the GPS is good but limited detail, the moving map uses real maps which gives you more detail, it also runs destinator which is like Tom Tom giving you street level turn by turn directions.

Apart from the GPS it is good to get mapping software for the PC, Garmin, Magellen, or Ozi explorer. These allow you to make waypoints, routes ect and you can upload into the GPS unit, or after a trip you can down load way points, track logs you saved while driving in the bush.

Go look at www.GPSOZ.com.au and www.ozieplorer.com
good sites.

The other units you can buy are the Magellan range, good units and they also have very good street level mapping, tracks and Topo, but they do not do the turn by turn instruction.

Happy Shopping
Dennis

Hi bob007 what you want is a Garmin unit with City navigator software and also use tracks of australia for the outback maps, there are topo map's which you can use but T4A and topo maps won't give you turn by turn in the bush. Or buy a PDA and use Tom Tom around town and have Ozi CE maps for bush

I have the same dilemma as you- have been looking at the explorist 500 as a stand alone device (dont want to bother with taking a laptop out with us) as I understand the built in maps are pretty good (even off road) and they now do marine maps as well that you can load up.....

Would be interested to hear if anyone is using one of these

Cheers

Hi Bob007

I have just bought a Garmin Nuvi 310.

It is Fantastic!!! to say the least.

My daughter & I are travelling to Longreach in Sept School hols on a camping expedition. I tells you where the Service stations, restaurants, nearly where the kitchen sinks are. i have bought the book camping australia Version 3 (I think that is what it is called & have programmed the caravan parks that are on the way into it so it will tell me where they are.

I drove to Bendigo the other day with it & it told me all the road names that we were approaching on both sides of the road.

It is TOUCH screen & very advanced but is is really EASY to use (being female) this was very important to me.

I would even say that this is AWESOM
Cheers
Rhonda

I am very happy with ipaq pda + bluetooth GPS, running oziexplorer. Don't use it much for city stuff.

Particularly useful is the ability to create & manipulate data (trips, waypoints, routes etc) on a desktop (large screen, better scope) then transfer those to the pda. And vise-versa.