Garmin GPS System vs. McNally Rand Driving Directions

It would be accurate to say that that my battered well traveled McNally Rand Maps were faithful traveling companions. Even though I used MapQuest on a number of occasions it was never a replacement for the McNally Rand full size Atlas. This meant that I always had old Atlas McNally with me and usually a stack of paper from mapquest that zoomed in on the details that the Atlas did not. This was a fine arrangement when your were traveling with someone that could be designated as a navigator but was a little unnerving when you were traveling alone and had to shuffle through the various sheets and pages while zipping along the interstate at a touch over the speed limit.

People actually think that talking on a cell phone is dangerous and distracting, you should have seen me in action with my maps if you think a cell phone is bad. This is where the Garmin GPS System that I was using really stood out, when I was traveling alone.

The trip started out with two people, I was traveling with a co-worker out of state for robotics training and he brought along his Garmin Car GPS for the trip. It guided us flawlessly to our Hotel and re-calculated the route quickly when we made a planned detour, it required no additional input from us to get back on track to our Hotel. I however was still not entirely convinced it was worth the investment when I already owned a road atlas and could get maps online free.

We experienced a minor problem the next day as we traveled to the training location from the Hotel, it seemed Karen (our pleasant GPS tour guide voice with the Australian accent) wanted us to turn to early, which I did of course because she was so pleasant and had not led us astray up to this point. So now I am really thinking that my old maps are still the way to go after all. It did not occur to me that I would have ended up in the right spot if I had just glanced at the sign and saw the street number on it in plain view, this revelation would come later as I reverted back to a map to get back to the hotel and drove past the turn while I looked at the map to see where I was, I was still not a convert yet though.

As I get older I am a lot less impulsive when I consider buying anything that costs more than about twenty bucks, I would like to think that this is my reason for not buying a GPS sooner, you know as opposed to just stubbornness. I however remained unconvinced that this Garmin GPS Unit was the ticket to ride that I was looking for, this was about to change rather quickly.

My co-workers family was meeting him later in the week (March Break was in full swing) and they were planning to stay a couple of extra days while I was going back by myself. This was not a big deal for me as I traveled alone a lot and did not mind it. The surprise came when I received a phone call from my boss asking me to visit another one of our plants on the way back home, this meant a totally different route. Instead of printing out new maps my co-worker insisted that I take his GPS (his wife had hers with her so he did not need his) and forget about the maps. I was a little skeptical but I eventually decided to go ahead and borrow it.

Let me tell you, this decision really sealed the deal and turned the tide for me, in a few short hours I was a full fledged convert, old Atlas McNally was now officially retired. What could sway a skeptic so quickly you may wonder. It was really quite simple and that's all it took, it just had to be simple.

Step 1. It took about 3 minutes for him to show me how to use it and enter my new destination, this even included a tutorial on a number of extra features.

Step 2. Drive alone on busy interstates in the Detroit area where there are a number of left hand and right hand exits to other interstates and roads with multiple detours while trying to get across the border into Canada without having to take your eyes off the road to look at a map.

Step 3. Have a little trust in Karen my new Australian friend who led me all the way to my destination and flawlessly navigated the multiple detours and I did not even slow down or stop to figure out where I was or where I needed to go. Now that's what I call simple, I was sold.

Step 4. One of the extra features this GPS had was the blue tooth hands free phone option which was a real bonus as it is illegal to talk on your cell phone in Ontario Canada while driving unless it is hands free. It took less than a minute for me to get my phone to work with the GPS, that was cool.

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