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From...

GPS: Going places in style

May 18, 1998
posted at:02:05:00 PM

By Lisa Moskowitz, Rebecca Freed, and Yael Li-Ron

You're driving peacefully along when a disembodied voice pops up telling you to hang a left at the next light. Is it some ghostly echo from your driver's permit days? A deeply submerged memory from those nervous teenage years when Mom played navigator? Nah. It's the notebook computer on your passenger seat.

Futuristic

Global Positioning System technology is likely to fundamentally change the way we get around in the next few years. GPS packages are a combination of hardware and software that use dozens of orbital satellites to pinpoint your location anywhere in the world. Used in conjunction with mapping software, GPS packages create a live, digital map of your surroundings that tells you where you are, where your destination is, and--ideally--the best way to get there.

PC World Online dispatched three editors to test today's most advanced GPS packages for notebooks and handheld PCs. These brave souls hopped into their respective vehicles, with a notebook on the seat beside them, and set out to navigate the urban mazes of Northern California. The verdict? GPS still has a long way to go, but the current systems on the market can offer much-needed navigational help to the business traveler.

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Far from perfect

The trick, as always, is finding the right product. Two of the packages we tested failed to provide enough value to offset the price and general unwieldiness of the technology. One package--TravRoute's Door-to-Door CoPilot--came through with shining colors, however, presaging a bright future for GPS technology.

Developments such as Microsoft's AutoPC, and several offerings by luxury car manufacturers and rental companies, integrate GPS directly into a vehicle's dashboard so you won't have to mess around with notebooks, cables, and bad audio quality. Until this futuristic picture becomes a reality in the next couple years, the best solution to your navigation headaches is a notebook-based system.

A final note: All three of the editors who tested these GPS packages are women. We asked some of the male editors to give it a go, but every man we approached refused to ask for directions--even from a computer.

SkyMap Pro: A few off-ramps short of a highway

I'm not exactly what you'd call a human compass. As long as I'm in California and the ocean is in sight, I know which way is west. But stick me in the middle of the country, or the middle of a city block for that matter, and I'm lost.

I figured I could use a GPS and map navigation software package, so I tried SkyMap Pro from Etak. Unfortunately, it didn't help all that much. While the program is useful for plotting a travel route, pinpointing your location using the GPS, and uncovering hard-to-find street addresses, it doesn't do a good job of safely guiding you to your destination. I found myself off course more than once and unable to check my directions without pulling over.

SkyMap Pro requires a notebook PC with a 75-MHz 486 processor, 8MB of RAM, Windows 95, at least 20MB of hard disk space, a CD-ROM drive, and a Type II PC Card slot. It comes with two CD-ROMs that cover the entire U.S. highway system, as well as a set of street maps. You also get a GPS antenna that installs via a PC Card, a battery-operated remote control to help you use the program without typing, and voice alert capabilities.

Once you install the maps and plug the GPS antenna into your notebook, plotting a route is relatively easy; routes can also be plotted without the GPS antenna installed. One word of caution: Plotting should be done before you start driving, because it requires your full attention. To plan a travel route, open the Routing Manager window, click the Start icon, then mouse over to the point from which you plan to start your trip. I flagged the address of my office building in downtown San Francisco as the starting point and Sacramento as the end point. I also selected a Way Point in Berkeley (you can plot up to nine Way Points between destinations) then calculated my route. In a few seconds, SkyMap highlighted the most direct path from San Francisco to Sacramento.

Written directions are another click away, but I found them to be somewhat incomplete. Instead of pointing me towards Highway 80 as the route indicated, the driving instructions announced that I was already on Interstate 280 (I wasn't) and should proceed north. I checked my position using the GPS and it placed me in the correct location, about a block from Highway 80. The driving instructions, however, insisted that I was breezing along 280.

I ignored the first few directions and proceeded onto the Bay Bridge, hoping SkyMap would correct itself as I drove. But this program doesn't recalculate routes, so I had to wait until I caught up with the original set of directions.

I was hoping the voice alert would read the directions to me as I drove, since I didn't print them out before starting my engine. Unfortunately, the voice module alerted me only to my direction, speed, and on-screen scrolling activity when I used the remote control. For example, when I scrolled across the map, the voice announced "scrolling right." When I was heading north and made a right turn, the voice said, "you are now heading east." Since it didn't tell me where I was going, I tried to glance quickly at the screen to catch a glimpse of my tracks. Alas, the program didn't redraw fast enough for me to see anything of use; I ended up pulling off the road to recalculate my route.

The sound quality of the voice module is clear in both the male and female variations, but very difficult to hear over the din of the car engine, even if the notebook's speaker volume is turned all the way up. When the batteries start to wane, the voice becomes even fainter.

SkyMap Pro's GPS tracking feature is pretty accurate. Once I installed and initialized the GPS, it located my position within a block or two. It requires a Type II PC Card slot and receives signals from 12 different satellites. Don't try to connect the Etak GPS antenna until the software is installed; I did this and caused a fatal error in Windows. And keep in mind that it takes a few minutes to initialize the program. This isn't a big deal before you start on your journey, but if you lose the signal, the remote control is incapacitated until it initializes again.

SkyMap Pro boasts a comprehensive Points of Interest list that includes hotels, restaurants, stadiums, museums, parks, ATMs, auto services, universities, and more. These destinations are accurately located: I easily found both a large city park and a small neighborhood park. You can choose to display as many Points of Interest as you like on any given map, but too many icons will obscure the map. Points of Interest can be displayed and hidden using the remote control.

Although the Etak users guide points out that the program is designed to guide you from city to city, not address to address, it's easy to find an exact street-level address. You can search for a specific address, intersection, city, telephone area code, zip code, or latitude and longitude reading.

But ultimately, SkyMap is just too hard to handle while you're on the road. If I'm going to frequently pull over just to adjust the thing, I may as well stop to ask a gas station attendant. At least that way I can get some snacks.

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