Detroit Free Press Mike Wendland Column: Personal Navigators
By Mike Wendland, Detroit Free Press
Jun. 23–GLOBAL POSITIONING SATELLITES — not that long ago, the exclusive domain of top secret government and military operatives — have now become so commonplace that they are changing the way America drives.
They also now have given us a new high-tech acronym to learn: PND, or personal navigation device.
Garmin, Magellan and Tom-Tom are some of the well-known brands of GPS receivers that consumers are using. All the carmakers offer optional factory-installed systems that also connect to the constellation of 24 satellites orbiting some 12,000 miles above Earth.
Those satellites beam microwave signals back to Earth. When a GPS receiver processes them, the system calculates how long it took the signal to get there. By matching that signal with other signals from other satellites, it’s possible to pinpoint a location down to 10 to 12 feet.
In the beginning
The United States developed GPS in the early 1970s and kept it as a closely guarded military secret. But when a Korean Airline civilian flight was shot down by Soviet fighters in 1983 after it had become lost over Soviet territory, GPS was declassified by President Ronald Reagan.
For much of that time, it was prohibitively expensive, mostly used by deep-pocketed hunters, hikers and boaters.
But as personal technology boomed in the 1990s, GPS receivers rapidly dropped from more than $1,000 to hundreds. Today, GPS is everywhere, and prices continue to drop as new models enter the marketplace, offering new services.
Sprint, Verizon and AT&T are now offering GPS systems on mobile phones. I’ve even got a GPS receiver from Garmin that mounts on my bicycle and tells me my speed, shows me where I am on a map and directs me to anyplace I tell it to.
Navigon 2100 max
I’ve been testing out one of the more affordable and surprisingly full featured new GPS receivers now on the market — the Navigon 2100 max, which sells for $299.
Super slim, with a 4.3-inch color screen, it offers a feature called Lane Assistant and Reality View to show a photo-like 3D drawing of highway interchanges you’re approaching, clearly marked so you know which lane to get into for upcoming turns and off-ramps.
Also built in to the Navigon 2100 max as a standard feature is DirectHelp, which provides instant access to directions and phone numbers of emergency services. It finds the nearest hospital, police station, tow truck company or drug store, giving you a readout of not just their location, but your exact location as well, to help emergency services locate you.
Add-ons
The Navigon comes with a standard U.S. map. But as communities change, roads are built and new subdivisions are added, maps have a habit of going out of date quickly. Navigon has an optional feature called FreshMaps that, for $79 more, gives you up to 12 quarterly map updates over three years.
There’s another option I’d suggest, too. It’s called Lifetime Traffic. For $99, it provides real-time traffic updates, including traffic flow, accident reports and alternate routes, for the lifetime of the product.
With those options, the Navigon approaches the $500 price range, but that’s still well below the $600 to $850 charged by many of the other GPS receiver makers offering those similar services.
MIKE WENDLAND is the Free Press Technology Columnist. He can be reached at 313-222-8861 or mwendland@freepress.com. Follow his blog at freep.com/wendland.
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