Wow, what a great gadget.
Years ago I had the need for some kind of portable mapping soft wear. Laptps had even been installed in the fire engines. The GPSr soft wear was just not up to the task. But the other things we were using them for worked great.
I even bought software to add to my Palm Pilot. It worked, but was very slow and fussy. It helped somewhat but just did not do the trick. You see, I get lost as soon as I get behind the wheel of any vehicle. I can walk around in the woods all day and come back out within several feet of where I went in, however the roads never seem to cooperate. I can print out maps and directions and even look at things from satellites in space, but I will take the wrong turn almost at every time, for some reason.
Finally a Friend bought me a Nuvi 200 on Black Friday as they were only $100. OMG! OMG! OMG! Where the hell have these things been hiding! I never looked into getting one of these because I had the misconception that there was a monthly fee attached to them. I was wrong and I have been kicking myself in the butt ever since. With the acreage associated with my butt it will take a while to complete the job. Needless to say I love it. I love it!
I love the fact that I don't need to focus on the screen, it tells you where to go and how to get there. In a nice way. However the lady does get a little annoyed when I keep taking the wrong road on purpose, because I don't like taking that particular road, but she recalculates and gets me back on track. Another feature that is great is when I am out on the road and finally get to a destination. All I have to do is put in the next place I want to go from the already entered favorites or just enter the address I have on hand. No need to try and figure out from the maps I have how to navigate from my location and not from my home location. What a frigging pain that was. I also liked the fact that I can put the coordinates in on a cache and it will take me right there. Wow!
Then Lexmano and Hollora informed me I can go paperless with this God send. I have tried it a couple of times, but I have screwed something up and the download fails every time. Stupid me, I never think to research these things online. Thanks for the tip Cache Maine. I love you. As soon as I'm done here I will be using the links.
Now that I have raved about these gems, I'll tell you what they can do. It has cut my travel time in half. I always had to add extra time every time I went to do an investigation, because I would drive around for hours looking for street signs. Now I go right there. When I worked for the State I had about ten pounds of maps that I had to carry with me everywhere I went. I would spend almost as much time figuring out where I was supposed to be going as I would doing the investigation. Now all is well and all the frustration and pressure is off. I am a much happier person now.
Have I said I love this thing? I love it! I love it!
I have no enemies, but I'm intensely disliked by my friends.