well not really. I drove my CL-S to Reading PA and I don't have a NAVI. I picked up the DeLorme Earthmate GPS adapter and program for my laptop. It works exactly the same as an in-car NAVI. The program cost $139 and is quite a bargain.

It put me in the center of Reading from my house in Pequannock. It even has a programmed selectable voice to advise you when to turn. The only shortcoming I found was the turn instructions generally came a few seconds too late. Is that an issue with in-car NAVI from the factory?

 

Interesting. Do you know if the GPS hardware you mentioned has any Linux support?

 

Nah - the in-car navi takes a few seconds to figure out your route, but once it has the route, it tells you when turns are coming up. It even has a countdown graph that starts when you're 1000 feet away from the turn and ends right when you should turn - it's pretty accurate too.

 

I think the in-car is more accurate because it uses something other than GPS to figure out your position - sensors in the car tell the computer how far you've gone and in what direction after it knows your initial position. The GPS system you have has to query the satellites and whatnot.

 

The in-car (CLS version) constantly checks the steering angle and wheel speed vs. GPS position. As the tires wear, the GPS tries to match up the change in position with the GPS data. When everything is working well, you can lose sats for a while and be fine. However, woe be to the poor person that loses satellites or doesn't make a right turn to wake up the NAVI when it is STUCK on parallel route (this may or may not have anything to do with the internal (car based sensor) input (just a CLS occurrence that happened a couple of times to me).

The downside of the internal sensors is: when the dealer turns the steering and wheels with power on and/or one makes a number of small back and forth maneuvers (Think about a few parking lot escape nightmares where your arms need a rest). I have found that it can take a few blocks to get the NAVI to figure out that it never really went anywhere (and I'm not 1/4 mile away from my true position).

Finally, INS (inertial navigation systems) can be added to GPS to do match or best a good car system. (IMO, when not if. And I might be missing someone/something new. I don't know for sure).

 

I use to have the laptop/GPS setup but I abandoned it in favour of the Garmin GPS standalone devices with built-in maps. I found the laptop to be most acceptable if you had a co-pilot since it was difficult to read the small laptop screen while driving. My laptop didn't have the greatest speakers so voice was difficult to hear sometimes. After experiencing Navi, I quickly understood that the integration was the key benefit to realtime navigation.

What the laptop solution appears to be missing is something that I find very important but everyone may not agree. I have to drive with a map orientated to "always up" instead of "north up". So when I look at the map, whichever direction I am traveling, it is from bottom to top of the display. With "north up", you can be traveling from left to right on the display, you can be traveling from top to bottom, or even at angles. This is confusing to me since I am so used to "always up". When I'm driving and looking at the display and I see a shortcut off to my left side, I expect that to be on my left side in real life.

I have yet to see a computer that orientates anything other than "north up". Otherwise those computer solutions for the most part work fine. You might even find a Pocket PC to be more convenient and slicker...with identical accuracy and cheaper software. I could have sent you all this old Delorme Street Atlas and MS Roads and Trips software discs I have laying around here...for free.

 

Hi Ken. This one actually has the ability to follow the car in the proper direction. It turns with the car and gives you direction, speed and altitude. It's kinda cool really. I don't use it that much and I have too many cars so I switch it to the vehicle when I need it.

How much was the Garmin? Usually there are pretty pricey?

 

Chod and i got lost in his CLS with Nav in my own town :shakehd:

i'm skepticle bout navi

 

:sqnteek:

 

dead serious...ask him if u don't believe me...damn bitch kept cuttin out and giving us new directions

at one point, we just stopped the car and looked at how the map kept recalculating directions to my house

 

I'm worried about you scoot!

 

my navi is the shit.

cuz of the damn cl i have to buy one for the lexus. i hope its half as good as my acura navi.

 

Well, GPS is just basically sending and recieveing ur coordinates. It's the reciever and the software part that acutually figures out what direction and velocity you are traveling at.

Navigation can only be as acturate as the data being transmited by the system. Since the govn't owns the system, they can also change the acuratecy of the system. At average, GPS should be within 3 meters or less

 

I know what you are saying (refresh rate?) but that's a lot of cpu power. You mean if you drive around and around in a clockwise circle, the map on the computer display will rotate counterclockwise to keep your car pointing to the top? That's what the Navi does.

The Garmin GPS V goes for under $400 used and it's very portable which means I can use it in rental cars, when I'm going for walks, on a bicycle, or out in the woods camping. I consider it my backup to Navi.