My opinions after using a GPS on my recent 8 day trip.
Pros: 1. Makes finding a hotel at the destination city a snap. 2. Helps locate food and gas. 3. Helps navigate big cities that you've never been to before. 4. Helps judge ETA.
Cons: 1. Doesn't account for construction. 2. May not bring you the best route for a motorcycle. 3. Doesn't know about detours and gets confused when you take them. 4. Will route you the way it's programmed and may actually take you the long way around. (I could see the hotel across the mall parking lot and all I had to do was go across the intersection and the parking lot. It routed us around the block on the road. 5. You get fixated on the darn thing and you tend not to read road signs. This is bad, especially if roads and bridges are closed. (happened to us twice on the trip)
6. They may be a distraction to the rider. I would tend to use them as a good reference or to help if you get lost.
7. They don't give you the perspective of a map on where you've been and where you're going.
Summary: I think they're a useful tool but shouldn't be used exclusively on a long road trip. IMHO, combining them with a good map and some common sense is the best use of these little gems.
I like having the GPS for those county roads that are poorly marked and have multiple names. The map often has a different name than the street sign and not everyone knows that County Road G44 = Highway 53 = 344th Street.
I agree that a GPS just isn't the same as a map in seeing the big picture. I can zoom and scroll around but the screen isn't big enough to do it justice. I also wish there was a way to set a specific route like you can in aviation GPS units by adding set waypoints along the way.
My Nuvi lets me send over bookmarked locations from Google Maps, but it would be really cool if you could draw out and design a route in Google Maps and send it to the GPS!
2007 America, Phantom Black/Sunset Red
Deposit down on 2010 Thunderbird - can't wait for it!
Quote: My opinions after using a GPS on my recent 8 day trip.
Pros: 1. Makes finding a hotel at the destination city a snap. 2. Helps locate food and gas. 3. Helps navigate big cities that you've never been to before. 4. Helps judge ETA.
Cons: 1. Doesn't account for construction. 2. May not bring you the best route for a motorcycle. 3. Doesn't know about detours and gets confused when you take them. 4. Will route you the way it's programmed and may actually take you the long way around. (I could see the hotel across the mall parking lot and all I had to do was go across the intersection and the parking lot. It routed us around the block on the road. 5. You get fixated on the darn thing and you tend not to read road signs. This is bad, especially if roads and bridges are closed. (happened to us twice on the trip)
6. They may be a distraction to the rider. I would tend to use them as a good reference or to help if you get lost.
7. They don't give you the perspective of a map on where you've been and where you're going.
Summary: I think they're a useful tool but shouldn't be used exclusively on a long road trip. IMHO, combining them with a good map and some common sense is the best use of these little gems.
pros: mostly agree, mine is hopelessly optimistic at eta. I would cite one more pro: as a heads up display the zumo shows me an excellent view of what the road is going to do next (twists, turns, switchbacks). Especially useful at night. And another thing! The zumo tracks my mileage since fueling up and will pop up a list of gas stations when I reach my preset limit. I used to start looking for fuel at 125 miles but my zumo is set to alert me now at 150 so fewer gas stops (except for the whole ethanol/altitude/crappy mileage thing). cons: 1 and 3: one of the classic advantages of mine(zumo) is that it just adapts to whatever crazy thing I might do on the ground and keeps giving me its best shot at what's next. There's a "detour" menu item if the road right ahead of me is blocked by construction but i've never used it. 2 and 4: I just don't worry about this. if it looks easier to go through a parking lot I might do it. 5, 6: yup. 7: yes, i usually have a map of my overall route on my tank - the gps is just my heads-up-display.
I frankly love mine overall. A couple of weeks ago i rode into muskegon in a thunderstorm and the zumo patiently routed me to the ferry terminal while i dodged crap and flooded roads.
Quote: Piper, are you referring to my request to send a route to the Nuvi? I wasn't aware of that - how is it done?!
Yes, that's what I meant. However I checked, ande it's called Mapsource and not Mapquest. Sorry about that. I'm might be out on thin ice here, but my 3 y.o. Garmin Quest came with this map program for the PC that allowed you to make routes and stuff to transfer to the GPS unit. I'm not familiar with the Nuvi, but my guess is that it works the same way.
Since I'm not a PC lover, I now use a program called Garmin Bobcat for my Mac. It does the same job but better of course...
FWIW...
"Wise men speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something."
I used to drive for a living and I always used maps, despite a sat-nav unit being available to me. If you spend some time studying a map, you've a mental picture of where you want to go, rather than just blindly going along. Should something unexpected occur, you can improvise. You can also get a feel for the route (will you be going through hills, etc) and it might be that your journey takes you near something interesting; with a map, you can see this and make a detour, with sat-nav, you'd miss it. Secondly, (the social/dehumanising aspect) map reading's a (dying) skill in itself; I think people rely on computers too much and they'll mess us up in the end. What ya gonna do if you're stuck in the middle of no-where with a broken GPS system and no phone signal? Thirdly, they're not always accurate. I say I used to drive; one of my colleagues who wasn't very good at map reading bought a GPS system-it got him lost on more than one occasion, including sending down 1-way roads and...round a (albeit big) roundabout the wrong way!! They're good in unfamiliar cities.
I've found some fantastic riding roads while lost.
Not that far away from me there are villages asking to be taken off the GPS as they are fed up of big trucks going through, as it's seen as the shortest route. The fact that the roads are not up to taking lorries isn't programed into them. Or at work we hear reports of GPS telling people to take the next left....but they don't appreciate there's a level crossing and so do take the next left......on to a railway track. causes chaos.
Gina
03 America - Pretty stock - except the TBS wheel...
06 America - missing, presumed in bits. With it's TBS wheel...
09 America - It's very blue....
"GPS's are lame! Where is your adventure, where is your sense of the road is life, it is the journey!"
/sarcasm off
Until you have to stop and call the wife on your cell phone to find out where you are on Mapquest and get directions outta there!
And this may only be urban legend but I heard that there was a study that, like spell check affecting a generations ability to spell, GPS's apparently have anegative effect on memory. Short term or long term, I can't remember which
In the land of the insane when you look around and find you are like everyone else, you discover that you are normal.
Whoever says GPS units take the adventure away from your ride have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
Anyone who doesn't agree with the directions...why the ****** would you blindly follow a computer's directions? If you see the hotel across the parking lot...GO THRU THE PARKING LOT!!! It's not trying to pull the wool over your eyes...it just doesn't recognize the parking lot as a legitimate thoroughfare since it's not a marked road.
I love using my Zumo...I've found more great roads and places while using it then without. Just ride along, make random turns, go thru random towns along the way...never without knowing exactly where you are. I still always carry paper maps for the big picture, but other than that, GPS has 'em beat.
And yes...I am quite proficient at reading maps and that skill will never deteriorate no matter how much I use the GPS.
I gots the 450...the only differences between that and the 550 is bluetooth capability and text-to-speech on the 550.
Basically you can use your cell phone on the 550...who cares about that?
And while the text-to-speech feature is nice, it's not worth the extra few hundred bucks to hear "turn left in 500 feet on Elm St." vs just "turn left in 500 feet"
edit: oh yeah...the 550 is good for XM radio I believe too. Doesn't matter to me...I use the mp3 player function all the time. I use an 8gig SDHC card...the player can "see" up to 1000 songs...any more will go unnoticed by the Zumo.
Quote: I gots the 450...the only differences between that and the 550 is bluetooth capability and text-to-speech on the 550.
Basically you can use your cell phone on the 550...who cares about that?
And while the text-to-speech feature is nice, it's not worth the extra few hundred bucks to hear "turn left in 500 feet on Elm St." vs just "turn left in 500 feet"
I've been mulling a GPS for the past year, but I'm a cheapskate. I drive pretty close to 60k per year, but know my routes by heart. I've borrowed a neighbors Garmin Street Pilot and found it incredibly annoying when I know the route I need to take. Enough to pull it out of the window. Borrowed it last week on a first time trip to Cin, OH. Programmed it enroute on I70, my first mistake. Chose the wrong street and ended in on the North side of Cincy vs. the SW side. That stupid mistake cost me 45 minutes and an GPS routed trip thru a pretty nasty part of Cincinnati. But, didn't have one last week in Utica NY. Decided to take in a movie before checking into my hotel. Pretty much got disoriented leaving the theater at 11 PM and went 45 minutes in the wrong direction. GPS would have saved me there. My other downside is one more thing to take out of the car when checking into a hotel for the night. Stereo headunit, XM, laptop already, now a GPS?, sheesh.
It's only as good as the programmer, you know! I don't use routes for it around town when I know faster ways to get somewhere. Keep in mind there's plenty of routes to get to a destination and it's just picking one of them. They are very handy when you're somewhere unfamiliar, and I just put it in the glove box when finished. The $99 I paid for my Nuvi 200 was a great deal and it's been well worth it!
2007 America, Phantom Black/Sunset Red
Deposit down on 2010 Thunderbird - can't wait for it!
Sorry about that. I'm might be out on thin ice here, but my 3 y.o. Garmin Quest came with this map program for the PC that allowed you to make routes and stuff to transfer to the GPS unit. I'm not familiar with the Nuvi, but my guess is that it works the same way.
06 America - missing, presumed in bits. With it's TBS wheel... 
09 America - It's very blue....
