Tag: GPS

This is our second week in Madison and already one difference between here and Marshfield is readiy apparent: this place takes more than 5 minutes to drive across. It’s been particularly difficult for my wife who has to drive to several different clinics across town for her resident duties, so we finally decided to buy a GPS unit in lieu of having her call me throughout the day for quick Google Maps consultations. We picked up a Garmin Nuvi 260 at WalMart (mainly because they had a no-restock-fee return policy) to evaluate and I have to admit it’s been pretty useful thus far. For her, it’s handy because it helps her get to where she needs to go, when she doesn’t know how to get there. For me, it’s let me attempt an unfamiliar route to a place I do know how to get to already. I confess to having been skeptical at first, but I can see the value-add even though I largely pride myself on my independent sense of direction. To be honest, the GPS hasn’t actually given me any new information in terms of a better route anywhere, but it was still nice to have just in case.

I am planning to return the Nuvi 260 to WalMart though – for the price, we can get a much better deal on a Nuvi 360 at Amazon, which adds mp3 playback and bluetooth for hands-free dialing. I think that this will be very useful later on in the year when we take various trips such as to Indianapolis for a conference, or elsewhere. My main concern was that I don’t become dependent on it and let my own navigating skills atrophy, but now that we’ve played with the 260 a bit I can see that this won’t happen. It’s an information multiplier, not a crutch.