gps advice please

[Perris Calderon]

I'm going out on sales locally, about 200 miles a day.

right now, I use my laptop and mapquest with a wireless modem, but I'd really like something realtime

Is there a card and software to let my laptop become gps aware?

or better, isw there a handheld that does everything i need`

 

[Geffy]

I think some of the Garmin ones can do something like that

 

[Perris Calderon]

thanx geffy, I'm sure they do.

I'm hoping someone has first hand experience with the handhelds, or software for my laptop

costco has a pretty cheap handheld, and I really can't figure out if it will do the trick

 

[Abbadon2001]

Im sure my uncle had an oldish pda that he hooked up to a gps kit and uses in the car - ill try and find out what the equipment he has was. I know it wasnt expensive and the pda wasnt top notch - at least a year old and i saw that back before xmas 2003

 

[Perris Calderon]

I found a very inexpensive program from a company called "delorme"

with the reciever, only 130 buckaroos...full map files for the entire u.s. included...voice recognition...a little crude, but very very nice

this is for my laptop...now I want something for my pocket pc...I know it's out there, but I can't find it

anyway, if anyone else gets this proggy, you really have to hook up the voice recognition for it to be useable while driving

it's also a huge hog...60k in taskmanager, 25% of my cpu...np when I'm driving though, not doing anything else on the box

 

[Electronic Punk]

I have been using a navman via my carkitted laptop running autoroute this week.
No voice recongnition but my position is updated every 2 seconds which is cool.

Apparently streetmaps does voice stuff, not recognition, you have to type in where you want to go, but it will tell you when to turn etc.

Got 500 miles to travel tomorrow, so will be giving it a good work out.

 

[Perris Calderon]

well, with the voice recognition on this program you still need to type addresses, but comands like back on track, where am I, what's the next turn, etc are hall ahndled very nice by the voice recognition engine.

very cool...when the text to voice pronounces something wrong, you go into the gui, type the correct pronunciation phonetically, play around with that till it pronounces it correct.

then the program asks if it can send the correction to microsoft!!!

I wonder if they update according to these emails...got to get the updates and see if they do.

anyway, I am really digging the voice recognition...have fun on your trip

 

[Kush]

btw what do u have to hook up to ur laptop to make it gpsable? just if u have a handheld device like the garmins right? or is there like a pcmi card that u can stick in or usb or sotmhing, that would be cool! btw we had a gis project in school and my friend had to use a gps to map our area here in khobar, it is neat sh!t i like that stuff

 

[Electronic Punk]

am dreading the drive tomorrow.
took me 6 hours to reach sheffield, then 2 more hours to reach this destination.

Autoroute thinks I can get home in 5 hours, so I am gonna aim for 4.

My GPS ultimately connects via USB.

 

[Kush]

thats what i thought they connect via usb

 

[Perris Calderon]

all the hardware you need comes with the program I mentioned, but ya, you need the gps recievewr