|
Your GPS Navigation Won't Mind If You Ignore It.. |
|
|||
|
Guest Article: My in-laws paid us a visit this week. Their visit marked the first time they had used a GPS navigation system instead of an atlas to get to our house. The GPS navigation system they used was the Garmin Nuvi 760, which I highly recommended to them. During their visit we talked several times about the good and the bad of the Nuvi 760 and GPS navigation in general. I was able to counter much of the negative feedback by demonstrating features on their Nuvi 760 that they just weren't aware of at the time. My confidence in the Nuvi 760 seemed to rub off on my in-laws. That is, until the day before they departed. On that day, I saw them in the kitchen tinkering for what seemed like a long time with the GPS. I decided not to intervene in order to give them a chance to figure it out for themselves. But fate had already made up its mind that I needed to help them. When you don't want to go where your GPS wants you to go They approached me cautiously and said, "We've been trying to figure out how to force the GPS to take the bypass around St. Louis. We don't want to drive through the city but it insists we should." My in-laws went on to explain that they tricked the GPS by inserting stops outside of St. Louis so the GPS would be forced to pick the bypass instead of the main thoroughfare through downtown St. Louis. I told them that what they did would work just fine but was a lot of unnecessary work. I also told them I had a better solution. Just ignore the GPS. My solution came as a bit of a shock to them especially coming from their techie son-in-law. But once I explained that the GPS would automatically recalculate their route using the bypass around St. Louis shortly after ignoring the GPS and taking the bypass, they seemed at ease. Recalculating routes is really one of a GPS navigation system's strongest features. And the simple, pleasing word, "recalculating" emanating from the GPS sure beats "I told you you were going to miss that turn" and "now, we're probably lost" any day!
|
|||||