Does everybody have a GPS? If not you should.

Do all GPS units remember your path like if you are on a boat and find a good fishing spot so you can find it again the next day? My Bro in-law's does that and its great when we hit the reefs in florida. I think he has an old magellean.
 
Back in 2002 we used the TopoUSA application from Delorme to navigate from Mexico to Canada and back to San Francisco - 65% of it off-road. As with other all-in-one applications, you could tell it to route only on primary roads or to use any available road.

We shaved a few hours off our return trip by taking the suggested route down a dirt logging road that ran most of the way through Montana. There were some moments where we questioned our decision (usually when we found ourselves face-to-face with a log-laden tractor-trailer), but we actually came out way ahead.

Used the Delorme system to navigate against LAT/LONG maps of USA, Mexico, Belize and Guatemala in 2004. It's really amazing what you can do with one of the GPS units when you have an appropriately corresponding printed mapset. We still have all the Gazetteers from those trips.

While the nice 15" laptop display is great, it is a little bit cumbersome! So, for daily driving in and around the civilised world, it is TomTom for me.

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Beat Takeshi said:
Do all GPS units remember your path like if you are on a boat and find a good fishing spot so you can find it again the next day? My Bro in-law's does that and its great when we hit the reefs in florida. I think he has an old magellean.
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I'm pretty sure that's a common feature for all GPS units now.

On mine you can be anywhere and with one button you can drop a flag on that spot... or if you know you want to put that spot in the database permanently you can save it. Then yes, in about 2 taps of the screen you can be directed back there at any time.

They sell marine specific GPS systems... and I'm sure that's what you'd want to buy for your boat... because of channel depth, shipping lanes, unseen hazards, currents, and borders that are defined entirely by coordinates based on distance to the shore. I wouldn't suggest anybody get an ordinary GPS and figure they can just use it for both land and water.
 
Check out the new Google Maps for Mobile too. It's for cell phones that have an unlimited data access plan (like EDGE, etc). Just downloaded it, and it gives you mapping, and if you have a GPS in your phone or you have a separate GPS device through BlueTooth it'll be able to read that and show you your position in the world.

But what's kinda cool is that it can also do that even if you don't have a GPS! They've added the ability to triangulate your position based on nearby cell towers. So it'll mark your position within, say, 1/4 mile or so. And it's free.

http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/index.html
 
My wife and I took a 15,000-mile road trip this year (drove from Key West to Seattle and points in between). We bought our GPS (a Garmin Nuvi 660) in Seattle -- it made the trip home MUCH more pleasureable.

I haven't researched the entire Garmin line, but it looks like the more expensive models toss in extra features (ie. Bluetooth, FM transmitter, MSN info, etc.) that you may or may not need. You also pay for screen size.

Anyway, I can vouch for the Garmin Nuvi 660. It's been almost flawless. Once you’ve traveled with a GPS, there’s no going back.
 
I was looking at the Mio 320 but it's not compatible with Mac, so I think I'm going with the Garmin Nuvi 200W which does have Mac compatibility.
 
dory_breaux said:
My little brother has one for GeoCaching, but I sure as hell would like one for mapping bike trails and such.
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Garmin has historically been pretty good about making their units open for data access from other applications. I've written scripts to do stuff like look up all the airport coordinates within a given distance from a coordinate pair, then plot those airports on a Garmin eTrex. You can also download the data with your track, say to plot on a topo. You can interface with the Garmin topo software. Also check out APRS which lets you track a GPS in real time.
 
Blaine said:
I was looking at the Mio 320 but it's not compatible with Mac, so I think I'm going with the Garmin Nuvi 200W which does have Mac compatibility.
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Good to know... was just looking at some systems today for my Aus return to a new house in a part of Australia I dont know the roads at all. (And Im on mac)
 
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