GPS

i ordered a treo 680.. i had a htc windows 5 phone but i got sick of how bad it sucked and how windows mail sucks... i had a 650 before and i rode it till the wheels fell off and then got the windows htc phone... a cingular 8125...

so now i am back with a treo and i am going to use chatter mail... i would have stuck with windows if chatter would have made a push-pull e mail client for windows but they have apparently vowed never to do this... some push emails are ok... but i use fastmail.fm that has a buch of cool features in imap that arent workable with 7 or good or xpress mail... plus i have a million e mail acounts as well....

anyway.. i got thinking about gps since i was shopping for a new car and i wanted it to have nav... but its a 2500 dollar option in most cars so i thought twice about it since i wont use it all the time and the only ones that have input methods that dont piss me off are bmw and audi (both of which i decided not to buy)... but even those ones were sort of stupid in their way... once you are used to using mapquest for directions all these car nav things are no real good...i got a volvo s40 t5...

i remebered gps nav for treos from a while back and i looked into it more... now they have a tomtom hook up for pda that costs about 200-300 bucks with a rechargable bluetooth gps chipset and then you see the directions on your phone while you drive... this is kind of the same as what you could get in a dedicated unit like tomtom one or garmin nuvi 200 something... so i think maybe it a lot of hassle to have a pda gps thingy...

i got a garmin nuvi 300 and i set it up in the parlking lot of best buy and then i let it guide me home... right off i was pissed because the touch screen soft keys arent a qwerty keyboard, they are a-z... so couldnt even hardly spell my own street... it actually found me a quicker way home, but the voice was annoying and it just said "turn left in .25 miles" or "turn right in 1 mile" without naming the streets... so i turned around half way home and returned it...

to get the street names you will have to pay 500 bucks or so and then it does a bunch of crap i dont need it to do and it sits there looking stupid on my dash all day...

the volvo nav comes up out of the dash and then goes away if you dont need it... maybe i should have gotten it.. but the input method is dumb...

so i am thinking that maybe the pda gig is a good way to go... because its the same as everything else for the money and i can just type in what i want to put in there on a qwerty keyboard and not have to do softkeys (which i hate, another reason to ditch the 8125)or the lame predective text/select a city from the list... i wonder though how it will work with the bluetooth in the car for the phone... will it interfere?... will it play directions to my stereo?... do i have to get also an fm modulator?...

i think i will order one and find out... tomtom has one and palm has one and they seem to be the same damned thing... but the palm casing for the gps chip is better looking...

more later...