Saturday, Jul 19, 2003 at 09:15
Pete, (and Mrs AL)
That is exactly the conclusion I think I am heading for. I started with the idea of getting the full moving map system because I already had a laptop. I then thought of buying the cheapest most basic gps I could find - even second hand, because after all as long as it had a
communications port to send the co-ordinate data, why bother with mapping, trip meter, area calc, speed etc? It's on the laptop. Then I thought - wait, I am not going to connect the laptop to the gps on every trip I do. (eg short weekend trips) And then I know my passenger (wife) will not want to have a laptop on her lap for very long. (it gets hot as well) I also looked at the elaberate systems to set up the laptop in the vehicle and I thought there was no way it is going to remain stable when travelling along heavily corrugated tracks such as the one to say
Chambers Pillar.
So I changed tactic and started to look for GSP's that had mapping functionality. Then I saw the price. So I decided to buy from USA.
Now I have a top of the range GPS loaded with maps of all of
Australia that I can do just about all (I think) that the moving map systems do. One disadvantage I have is that it is not on a big colour laptop screen -but then again in
bright sunlight in a car I understand it is difficult to read in any case unless you have a brightness function on the pc.
I can still take my pc along with me and at the end of the day if I want to l can load the track onto the map and see where I have been. I can also create new routes and load back upto the GPS for the next days travel without too much trouble.
So in the end I do not think I will go with the pc moving map system as I have a much more convenient and versatile system right now.
Peter
ps - It took a lot of research to get to this point.
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