Closing Down

I will not be posting to this blog anymore, though I will be leaving it up indefinately. I no longer have the time nor the inclination for it. I am still posting to my Vox blog, hope to see you there.

GPS a Life Saver for the Navigationally Impaired

While traveling this past weekend I found the Verizon VZ Navigator GPS system on my Razr phone came in quite handy (thanks Dad!). Simple to use, I downloaded for about $3 a day, but you can use it all the time for about $10 a month. It was able to navigate me through Boston, something I've never been able to do on my own, so I imagine it would be useful just about anywhere.

Using it was simple, I just typed in where I needed to go and it pretty much took care of the rest. It loads maps for you as needed and gives you verbal commands as you approach your turns. One thing I really appreciated is that most time when it tells you the next turn to take it also tells you to prepare to turn left or right at the next turn. When coming down an off-ramp from the highway this is particularly useful as many times you have to pick a lane before you get to the end of the ramp. The maps are also useful, especially when you think maybe the Navigator has gotten confused, you can zoom out the map and see it does really know where it's going. I thought for sure it was leading me astray out of Boston, but it was right. Hence my need for just such a program in the first place!

Another nice thing is that if you do take a wrong turn because you didn't understand it's instructions it doesn't have you turn around or anything, it just recalculates the quickest route from where you are. It's seamless enough that if you're not paying attention you might not even noticed you took a wrong turn at all. The GPS is also sensitive enough that when I asked for directions to get home from my job, while I was still in the building, the first thing it told me I had to do was to get on a road.

Of course no system is perfect. While driving underground in Boston it stopped working because the phone couldn't get a signal. And it can be a drain on the battery. The Navigator still works quite well with the Razr closed, however, which helps.