The Glass is Too Big - Home

It's been well established that I have a completely defective internal GPS. At several different points, I've looked at getting the equivalent of a navigational wheelchair: a dashboard GPS. Every time, something has stopped me.

Then, this week, with Dell delaying the new laptop I wanted until the end of August, I re-evaluated my tech spending. I canceled the laptop and ordered a replacement keyboard for the 700m I already have. If, in September, I have other reasons for wanting to replace my laptop, I can take advantage of the Back-to-School sales. However, with that purchase canceled, and me having tons of meetings with potential clients and recruiters over the last couple of weeks, the GPS made a lot more sense.

So, I dug around and bought a refurbished TomTom GO 700 for $250 or so instead of the $379 it goes for new or the insane $700 that the MSRP is listed at. I picked this one because of the bluetooth capability. While my current phone isn't bluetooth, this thing can be a speakerphone as well as use a bluetooth phone for getting traffic info, etc. down the road (sorry, bad pun).

At any rate, it came today and I had to give it a try. It took a bit of wetting to get the suction cup to stick to my windshield, but after that, it worked like a charm. I set up the home location to my address and went out for a drive. I wandered around a bit and then pulled into a parking lot to set up a route. I told it to get me home and it gave me great directions, kept an updated estimate of when I'd get there (changed when I was slowed down by red lights) and announced upcoming turns.

An added bonus is that it gives directions the way I like them. When I take a left hand turn, I like to know whether my next turn will be right or left, so I can get into the correct lane. Lots of people don't give that information, but this thing does. I'm sure that the failings will be the same with anything based on mapping data. It includes restaurants that have been torn down in my town and probably has outdated or missing addresses for some stuff.

However, those shortcomings are against a perfect ideal rather than the imperfect present reality. As it is, I hobble around by using Google maps in advance, where I have to have a PC and a printer before I get in the car. This is WAY better. I should have bought one of these a long time ago.

Heck, it even gets a sporadic signal here in my *basement*. The GPS in my old Nextel phone practically required climbing on the roof to get a lock.

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