Why GPS is Essential Travel Gear for Vacation or Business Travel

by Dave Rogers

When vacationing in unfamiliar places, there’s various consumer electronics and technologies that can help you enjoy the sites or stay focused on the business at hand. A PDA, GPS, and translation software are indispensable additions to your travel gear.

It’s easy to add GPS antenna to your handheld. Equipped with appropriate mapping software, your handheld becomes a powerful navigation instrument, eliminating the need to carry any additional hardware. GPS units are small, lightweight, and inexpensive add-ons available for every major brand of PDA, palmtop, and pocket PC (Palm, Visor, Jornada, iPaq, Cassiopeia, Clie, etc.).

A GPS is extremely useful when combined with digital street maps. GPS-equipped PDAs or laptops can generate instant, on-the-fly, turn-by-turn, moving-map directions as you navigate in unfamiliar territory. It is like having a co-pilot navigator in the seat beside you with the accuracy of a local taxi driver. Missed turns can be a thing of the past. And because they are so unobtrusive and easy to use, they are less distracting (and thus safer) than using standard paper maps or printed turn-by-turn driving directions.

Vacation Travel
Navigate to points of interest with your GPS, including mapping software specific for the regions in which you travel. Find hotels, restaurants, gas stations, sightseeing points and much more, by simply selecting or entering the coordinates and letting your GPS receiver guide you there.

Avoid being scammed by unethical taxi drivers. With a GPS you know if a “short cut” really is a short cut and that you’re not being taken on a longer route just to rack up a higher fare.

Your visit will be more fun with a GPS since it allows you to enjoy your experience without worrying so much about how to get around.

Business Travel
When traveling for business you’ve got a lot to concentrate on and it is frustrating to try to follow a set of directions, or make sense of a map while driving to your destination. GPS navigation simplifies everything for you. While you concentrate on the road and the business ahead your GPS receiver guides the way.

With your receiver and mapping software you can avoid delays due to heavy traffic, construction work, or road accidents so that you will arrive on-time and ready to do business. Your business is important, so ensure that you arrive unflustered, unscathed and on-time.

Some GPS units can give updates on your estimated time of arrival, so you never have to wonder if you will still make it on time to your destination when something unforeseen happens. Your GPS mapping software can show you the impact something will have on your schedule, so you can phone ahead to advise, for example, other meeting participants of your new ETA. Frustrating uncertainties are avoided, and the others do something more productive in the meantime than wait and wonder when or if you will show up.

Translation Software
For those traveling overseas it can be a challenge to find your way around a new city, particularly when the signs are written in another language. With a GPS, you can record the location of where you want to go and then follow the direction arrow on the receiver’s screen to find your way home. But what if you need to do more, and communicating with the locals is a problem? This is where translation software comes in handy. Software can be loaded into you PDA that makes it just as handy as a travel book – but the PDA software can contain more info and useful search functions. Ectaco software products make in excellent choice.

>> For more GPS and mapping related resources please visit www.mightygps.com.

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