GPS = bad directions
Post Fiend
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 7,021
Likes: 5
From: Almost Heaven
Me and the folks have been running around in the Mountan state for a month trying to find a home. I can personally tell you just how inacurate a GPS can be. They are very very useful, but not fool proof.
Posting Guru
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 1,958
Likes: 0
From: Southeastern Indiana
I'm just too tired to deal with it.
It's a lot people for pets's sake!!!!
Elder User
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 629
Likes: 2
From: DFW Metromess, TX.
I love my GPS! Yup! That's right! It's off by some footage sometimes, but it takes me down the same roads that I would go down anyway...so we think alike. I don't know that anyone cares. I go from one end of the country to the other, and have no doubt. I call the voice Edith, as in Bunker. I turn her off most of the time, but if I want to annoy someone riding with me, she's talking out loud! 
Hotshot
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 11,537
Likes: 27
From: Long Beach, Ms.
Have the person that you are going to visit give you their location as a set of coordinates not as an address. Your GPS will then be able to locate them with a quite small margin of error. If you have a problem finding an address with GPS it is not the GPS systems fault. It is the fault of the people who input the map data. See my earlier post #8 where I posted the coordinates for my location. If you were to put my address into Streets and Trips you will end up some 4 houses east.
Hotshot
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 17,398
Likes: 317
From: Whittier, CA
A navigational GPS may seem like a silly gadget. I was skeptical until we owned one. Now we've got one in all 3 vehicles.
Sure, maps do the job, if you've got enough of them. I've still got a Thomas guide that lives in the truck. And as long as I stay near home, that works well enough. But if you go on extended trips you'll be toting a lot of maps along to cover the Interstate system and the city streets of one or more destination citites. Who wants to buy a Thomas guide just to visit a city? That's why PC programs like Streets and Trips was successful, and now we've got all that functionality in a palm sized touch screen with a sweet voice to guide us.
Sure, maps do the job, if you've got enough of them. I've still got a Thomas guide that lives in the truck. And as long as I stay near home, that works well enough. But if you go on extended trips you'll be toting a lot of maps along to cover the Interstate system and the city streets of one or more destination citites. Who wants to buy a Thomas guide just to visit a city? That's why PC programs like Streets and Trips was successful, and now we've got all that functionality in a palm sized touch screen with a sweet voice to guide us.
Postmaster
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 4,151
Likes: 0
From: Moonlight Moose Enclosure
Okay somebody smack me!
I must eat some serious serious crow.
I allowed my child to print out Google directions to where she was attending riding camp. oh what was I thinking?
I looked at Atlas map and it was drive to jasper and then shoots straight south to destination....but noooooooooooo i put faith in Google and let me put it this way I might as well have dropped my drawers and laid over the log and said go ahead..I'll squeal because damn if i didn't end up miles I mean some serious miles on a road that I never should have been on, going through towns I never should have had to go through and all because of an online driving direction service. Over an extra hour of driving and after all was said and done it put me exactly where I would have been had I followed my map, Jasper. I am sure some type of GPS would have agreed with my original choice of routes.
So yes i found myself wishing I had a GPS or at least followed my instinct.
I must eat some serious serious crow.
I allowed my child to print out Google directions to where she was attending riding camp. oh what was I thinking?
I looked at Atlas map and it was drive to jasper and then shoots straight south to destination....but noooooooooooo i put faith in Google and let me put it this way I might as well have dropped my drawers and laid over the log and said go ahead..I'll squeal because damn if i didn't end up miles I mean some serious miles on a road that I never should have been on, going through towns I never should have had to go through and all because of an online driving direction service. Over an extra hour of driving and after all was said and done it put me exactly where I would have been had I followed my map, Jasper. I am sure some type of GPS would have agreed with my original choice of routes.
So yes i found myself wishing I had a GPS or at least followed my instinct.
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Super Moderator
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 40,024
Likes: 1,519
From: Maine, Virginia
Okay somebody smack me!
I must eat some serious serious crow.
I allowed my child to print out Google directions to where she was attending riding camp. oh what was I thinking?
I looked at Atlas map and it was drive to jasper and then shoots straight south to destination....but noooooooooooo i put faith in Google and let me put it this way I might as well have dropped my drawers and laid over the log and said go ahead..I'll squeal because damn if i didn't end up miles I mean some serious miles on a road that I never should have been on, going through towns I never should have had to go through and all because of an online driving direction service. Over an extra hour of driving and after all was said and done it put me exactly where I would have been had I followed my map, Jasper. I am sure some type of GPS would have agreed with my original choice of routes.
So yes i found myself wishing I had a GPS or at least followed my instinct.
I must eat some serious serious crow.
I allowed my child to print out Google directions to where she was attending riding camp. oh what was I thinking?
I looked at Atlas map and it was drive to jasper and then shoots straight south to destination....but noooooooooooo i put faith in Google and let me put it this way I might as well have dropped my drawers and laid over the log and said go ahead..I'll squeal because damn if i didn't end up miles I mean some serious miles on a road that I never should have been on, going through towns I never should have had to go through and all because of an online driving direction service. Over an extra hour of driving and after all was said and done it put me exactly where I would have been had I followed my map, Jasper. I am sure some type of GPS would have agreed with my original choice of routes.
So yes i found myself wishing I had a GPS or at least followed my instinct.
Other bennies of the GPS is, you can find POI's such as hospitals, gas, food etc.
Tim
Elder User
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 629
Likes: 2
From: DFW Metromess, TX.
You can always grab the line of travel on Google and try differing routes to see what it says time and mileage are. I check all three. Maps, Rand Mcnally, and plug in the GPS. My Garmin allows me to try different routes as well, just a matter of playing with it. Takes a few minutes, but well worth it. The GPS and Google/Rand McNally are not Fool Proof. Then again, neither is a map.
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