Technology is wonderful and most of it works well and when it does go wrong it is usually the human interface that is the problem. Having said that

we bought our first Garmin Gypsy V  GPS in time to go to the Outer Hebrides, Once we set off on our journey full time in the Motorhome, then

it was handy for keeping us on the straight and narrow most of the time.

 

In 2004 we invested in the the Garmin Streetpilot C330 and the first few weeks with it had us wondering if it was worth the money. As we got

used to it we realised more and more not to rely on it, a GPS does not do away with the need for using a map and doing your homework by

planning ahead.   

 

Our Garmin presented us with short cuts that were little more than a track you could hardly walk a Horse up, it has told us halfway across a

100 ft viaduct to turn immediately right and on another occasion turn left into a blank rock face. The amount of information in such a small

piece of equipment is amazing, but it is a type of computer and if the input is wrong the output will also be wrong.  

 

Having said all that we find that the GPS comes into its own in Towns and Cities usually getting us in and out without to many problems. But, yes

there are always buts, and in the Town of Troyes they were rebuilding a part where we had to cut through, but the instructions from the GPS had

us going around in circles because certain streets had been closed off. Obviously this had nothing to do with the unit itself but left us in the

middle of unknown territory not knowing which way to go. Unless you have a map of the Town in a situation such as the above, your stuffed and our

backup is Autoroute on the Laptop, it has never failed us yet.  

 

Another problem with the human interface is putting in the wrong information such as assuming that two post codes  (zip codes) border onto each

other, that aint necessarily so. Again experience has proved they can be 6kms apart and you end up once again in the middle of a Town you do not

know or have a map for, going up narrow streets you would not walk a Dog up, with an RV .   

 

Now you may think we have a down on our GPS but we do not, it is a great piece of kit, you just have to use a bit of common sense when using it,

because it can get you into a hole but also get you out of one.  

 

How to choose a unit, speak to people who have one and get their opinion, look at prices, one   aquaintance had a unit that cost £5,000 and did

almost everything except make the coffee. To be fair it does seem you get what you pay for in most cases, but some manufacturers put on a basic

map then charge you ' X ' hundreds  for  other maps. Also included sometimes are Speed Cameras etc, but if you keep within the limits, do you really

need to pay out a lot of money to avoid them and remember they may not cover cameras on the Continent.  

 

One of the things we really like about our Garmin is the ability to load it with information that we want. As we stop at the various campsites we

can upload Lat/Long, from the computer onto the Garmin or vice versa, as  POI's ( places of interest ).  All this means that when we want to return

to a particular campsite the information is there, it works for us.  

 

Now  manufacturers tell you to stick the unit on your windscreen so it can access satellites easily, but then further on in the manual you are told

not to have it in direct sunlight where it can get overheated. This is what I call the ' Duh ' factor,apparently manufacturers do not know

that the Sun shines through the windscreen !  We have our unit on the dash with a home made ‘envelope’ which protects it from the sun. If you have

a vehicle with an overhang at the front you may find that the GPS is sometimes hidden from the signal so an external antenna will solve the problem.

 

Would we be without our GPS? no, it may be a love hate relationship but on the whole we would rather not do without it.

 

 Being able to put your own places of interest (POI´s) into the Garmin is definitely a bonus, but some GPS units will not accept normal Lat/Long

format ie.  degrees,  minutes and seconds as the system will not recognise them. Another point is that the file needs to be a  *.csv  file an ordinary

text file just does not work, trust me  as  I struggled for hours  trying to get things to work  until stumbling on the  .csv info.

 

Normal Lat/Long requires to be converted into decimal  and how you do that is as follows ...     divide the seconds by 60 then add the minutes.  

Divide that answer  by 60 and add the degrees and your answer is what you need for the file.

 The formula looks like this ... Degrees(Minutes + (seconds÷60)÷60)).  You need to copy the required layout for a comma delimited file in Wordpad

 or use Excel to do the layout and save as a  .csv  file.   

 

In Garmin you have POI files on the disk most of which you really do not want or need, ie hundreds of Restaurants, Pois with headings but nothing

in them and unfortunately you cannot modify or remove them so they just waste space on the internal disk, this is one of the few gripes I have.

     

You pays your money and takes your choice. Some units use SD memory cards and have facilities if you require them to show photographs and play

MP3 s.