Im going on a roadtrip soon, and need some sort of guidance.

What to I need to use my Laptop as a navigation system?

 

Microsoft Streets and trips, or Keyhole (expensive, but amazing) i think you can get gps with one of those, i wish i knew more about it but I know that either of those map programs will help alot even if you cant get opperational GPS.

 

I have streets and trips...

I need/want something that will act as an incar navi. You know, turn by turn...

 

For streets and highways, MS Streets is fantastic. Get the USB GPS mouse (GPS receiver that plugs into the USB port) for an extra $50 and you'll want for no paper map. Ever.
As for trails, get OziExplorer, use the same USB GPS bug and scan your own maps. Works great for general aviation, as well.

I've been using these combos for about a month now...fantastic. OziExplorer has a great feature that breaks down each track so you can see what speed you really were doing...came in handy when I demonstrated to the wife that my speed never exceeded 20 KPH last weekend when I took junior camping back on some pretty remote trails.

Get Fransom's GPS Gate (shareware) and you can run several GPS programs at the same time (each one pages the GPS on a virtual port)

 

i just got streets and trips 05 with the GPS reciever...I love it, its great for the roads, havent used it off tho....it would show where you are, but it would still give you altitude, direction and position even if it was not a greatly detailed picture

 

do you have to be connected to the internet using that or does the gps/usb connection do that for you?

 

AVN5434

or
http://oemvalue.com/toyota.htm#

 

Delorme has a package with road maps and a GPS (USB) for under $100. I just used it to navigate all over the eastern seaboard. It gets off by a few feet here and there, but I'd give it a solid 98% for my trip (through seven states).

The turn by turn is a little annoying, frankly, since it tends to subdivide things like crazy. Changing freeways at an interchange can have 5 or 6 different steps. But for planning, finding, and tracking, it's excellent.

The folks at mp3car.com think MS streets is better that the delorme, but the price is *really* tough to beat.

 

http://madtv.com/media/classics1/pill.mov

 

hands down, the map drawings of microsoft's streets and trips looks WAYYYYYY better than delorme. and i lilke delorme.

but i've been using MS S&T since 2000 (when they had a stupid 15 second delay for drawing your position on the screen. stupid... but i found a 2 sec hack for it though... fornutately, in 2003 version, they fix that stupidity and the put in a 1 sec delay) and really enjoy it.

can wait for their version to have a bird's eye view with voice navigation...

 

If anyone has a Garmin GPS that they want to use with a laptop or PDA, I have a BlueTooth adapter for the any of the Garmin units with the round 4-pin connector that I no longer need (decided to hardwire the GPS instead). It works quite well, about 50' range and also supplies power from a cigarette light to the GPS, supports the NMEA data transfer mode:



I paid about $80 for it, will sell it for $70 shipped.

 

In my 4Puter I use a front end named MapMonkey www.mapmonkey.com

It uses the Destinator 3 maps and it's the only that is designed to work with touchscreens.

David