I use a Garmin 360 and I think it is the most useful piece of electronic gadget I have ever spent my dough on. (The only other device I use more often is of course, my HP laptop but that’s company gifted).

Nuvi 5000 is the latest in the series of Garmin navigational GPS products to hit the market. 360 to 5000, sure sounds like a hell lot of difference but trust me, its only numerical. There is only so much you can go as far as core technology goes. Here by introducing newer models, they are only making spec changes and not introducing a totally new concept.

Comparing with the nuvi 360 that I have, the only way nuvi 5000 or another GPS would out strip it in technology would be if it has a more robust satellite receiver.

Points of Interests (POIs), live traffic receiver, maps, all these can still be updated later on whenever a new update is available in the market.

Some cons with my nuvi 360 – sometimes it takes inordinately long to load the route map initially when you boot it up. Worst case scenario, I often have to reboot it and hold it up my arm facing the sky so that it loads faster. Also, while driving down the streets of Manhattan it would sometimes lose the signal cuz of the high concentration of tall buildings around.

Read the full story

(Pic: Nokia 6110 Navigator, courtesy unwiredview)

It is the latest acronym to invade the mobile world. And after a rickety start, it seems to be making itself right at home in India too! We are talking of the Global Positioning System, or GPS as it is popularly known as. Basically a tool that helps users find their way by plotting their locations using satellites, GPS has of late become a standard feature of high-end phones and could be making its way to the mid-segment too.

Why GPS rocks

For the uninitiated, GPS is a technology that pinpoints the location of a person on a map. What one needs for this is a GPS-enabled device that can communicate directly with satellites , which do the actual pinpointing and then show the result on the device. So if you are using a GPS-enabled phone (say), you will be able to see yourself as a dot marked on a map of your present location.

And if you happen to have the right kind of software loaded on to your device, you could look up the most convenient way of travelling from one place to another-and even watch yourself doing so on the map! Add to that features like turn-by-turn instructions (in voice and text), information about traffic congestions as well as alternate routes, the ability to search for landmarks, and you can understand why GPS was considered invaluable for travellers who loved technology.

Read the full story