Why I don't use GPS or computer navigation (rail, old, places)
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I don't use them because I don't need them. I have managed for years without such gadgets and can find my way just fine. All in all how many people other than business people, are going so many places daily they need instructions on how to get there. Most of us are going places we frequent as it is. I would think we would know how to get there.
I don't use them because I don't need them. I have managed for years without such gadgets and can find my way just fine. All in all how many people other than business people, are going so many places daily they need instructions on how to get there. Most of us are going places we frequent as it is. I would think we would know how to get there.
Not necessarily! More people than you think are...shall we say...geographically challenged.
Remember Miss Daisy? "This isn't the way to the Piggly Wiggly!"
I don't use them because I don't need them. I have managed for years without such gadgets and can find my way just fine. All in all how many people other than business people, are going so many places daily they need instructions on how to get there. Most of us are going places we frequent as it is. I would think we would know how to get there.
When I was running my consulting business I went out into farm country quite often. Following directions from someone who has lived out there 30 years is not easy. Obvious landmarks for them are not for us.
My Garmin saved me a lot of wandering...
And we like it on trips especially when driving through larger, unfamiliar city freeways. Some of those are a mess and very confusing.
I can decide on a European city, get my hotel on bookings.com and set my navi so I can get to the town after work on Friday and be refreshed for my real experience in the town in the morning.
I don't have the time or interest to spend 4 days looking at maps every week.
I travel 3 out of 4 weekends a month so a navi is a great thing for me.
If you don't travel as I do, or even if you do, do it your way.
No one is asking you to do otherwise, are they?
Location: Mableton, GA USA (NW Atlanta suburb, 4 miles OTP)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stillkit
I used a Tom Tom once up in Oklahoma and got horrendously lost. It didn't know the county had recently changed all the rural roads from names to 911 numbers. Neither did I.
Why would the GPS care about road names? It only sees a series of vector operations...?
Why would the GPS care about road names? It only sees a series of vector operations...?
GPS means Global Positioning System, a satellite-based technology to pinpoint specific locations on the earth. All travel aids, such as Tom Tom, Garmin, etc use that system to direct you to where you want or need to go.
In the example I referenced, I was using Tom Tom, a commercially available navigation system based upon GPS. You enter your location, the location you want to go to, and it uses overlaying maps to chart it's recommended course.
Naturally, that recommendation is highly dependent upon continuously updated information about changes in road alignment and designations (available via internet downloads) and, up there in Oklahoma, the information was too new for either Tom Tom or I to know about it. The county roads had been changed from names to numbers just literally days before I arrived.
GPS means Global Positioning System, a satellite-based technology to pinpoint specific locations on the earth. All travel aids, such as Tom Tom, Garmin, etc use that system to direct you to where you want or need to go.
In the example I referenced, I was using Tom Tom, a commercially available navigation system based upon GPS. You enter your location, the location you want to go to, and it uses overlaying maps to chart it's recommended course.
Naturally, that recommendation is highly dependent upon continuously updated information about changes in road alignment and designations (available via internet downloads) and, up there in Oklahoma, the information was too new for either Tom Tom or I to know about it. The county roads had been changed from names to numbers just literally days before I arrived.
In this case paper maps would have been just as useless as a GPS.
I use GPS every day at work, and I get to calls before other officers that are closer alot of the time. I can have an address entered in a matter of seconds while others flip through a map book. When it gives me the route, I look at the big map on the GPS unit with the highlighted path (to see the area of the city it is in) and start heading that way on my own directions, and as I get closer, the GPS is continuously updating along with my turns to let me know where to go. My job would be alot harder without GPS.
In this case paper maps would have been just as useless as a GPS.
No, they weren't. Once I got paper maps, I could judge the relative distances between one cross road and another and determine which was the right place to turn.
My biggest problem, which neither Tom Tom or the paper maps could solve, was the housing numbers along the roads. They did not progress numerically from one place to another in sequence. For instance, the house I was sitting in front of may have been designated as 2000 on X number road, but the next one wasn't necessarily 2001 or 2002. It might very well be 2450, 5000 or something else.
The Tom Tom seemed to assume that the next number would be in sequence. So did I, but I was able to more rapidly assess the reality and make allowances than Tom Tom could have ever done without driving back to an internet outlet and re-programming the device. The house numbers counted up one side of the road (from the county baseline and meridian) and down the other side from the road terminus.
Without my maps and common sense, I might not have ever figured that out.
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