Island Computing The Gadget Corner The Amazing Gadget
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1. The Gadget Corner The Amazing Gadget 5915 a combination Pocket PC GPS WiFi terminal MP3 player PDA etc I have played with GPS units at stores for over a year now and I ve always been highly skeptical I just returned from a 2500 mile auto trip and I m a new convert to GPS If you drive to other areas and don t have one GPS units now start around 199 read on and become convinced 5 month I had just received my HP Our trip started on Hilton Head Island and included Philadelphia Rhinebeck Boston and a return via NY and NJ Our first stop was an overnight rest near Fredericksburg VA The GPS not only faithfully plotted our way but even included in its database a list of nearby hotels restaurants etc It even directed us to a Bonefish near our hotel When we first left here I had a stack of maps open to guide our way double checking the GPS at each oppor tunity By the end of 500 miles I trusted the GPS 95 but my wife still did not Our next stop involved navigating around Washington to downtown Philadelphia to an address in the old part of the inner city The GPS by that time we both loved it so much that our paper maps were in the back seat and we had Island Computing named it Gladice faithfully found the route and announced each turn we had to make Those TV advertisements showing a driver affectionately talking to his GPS are really on target Now for some technical details Setting up a ro2. ntown Boston one of the hardest cities in the US to drive in I usually try to avoid driving in big cities but that ability to recover from driver errors is a real stress reliever How ever there is no guarantee that she could handle Coligny Circle Most of the above features should be available in just about any modern GPS from the 199 spe cials in the Packet to the 2000 Lexus package However the 399 HP 5915 has some other Continued on next page K2BPO Steve Baer CONTENTS PREV PAGE NEXT PAGE VIEW PRINT EXIT
3. ute is really easy Due to a glitch by HP the user manual for the TOMTOM Navigator 6 soft ware that runs on the 5915 was not included in the HP data Nonetheless it is so easy to use that I never needed the manual To set up a route you use the touch screen to specify where you are starting from either a street address you type in a fixed point in its database or a location that it senses via GPS You then tell it where you want to go and if you want to go via the shortest path shortest time or no tolls It does the rest and displays time and distance as well as a route overview When we got back I located a TOMTOM manual online and dis covered that I could also have set intermediate waypoints You then just drive off and it will show you where to go on its color screen how far to a turn and announce the needed turns a short time before you make them There were a couple of features that I especially liked When driving in thick traffic on a highway or in a con gested city the loudspeaker turn directions allow a driver to direct all of their attention to the road without having to look at a map or street Page 7 signs to figure out where to turn This is a real Safety feature Also on rare occasions I would miss a turn When I did Gladice would politely announce make a U turn When I could not she simply recalculated a new route from that position and gave me new directions That saved a lot of stress in Dow
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