Michael McAleer reports on a new computerised on-board mapping system covering Irish cities and towns.
Finding your way around Ireland's winding roads is difficult at the best of times, particularly if you have to resort to using road signs.
The rest of Europe has moved with the times and can avail of quality navigation systems in their cars.
Now, thankfully, we are able to join our continental cousins and find our way around with the aid of a computerised mapping system that can be loaded onto a palm pc, such as the Compaq iPAQ. The Navman FPS 3000 software sells for €420.
While not all the towns and cities are fully mapped on the system as yet, an upgrade package is available with detailed city maps for Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. A number of towns also get more detailed mapping on the upgrade, including Dundalk, Bray and Drogheda.
We took the opportunity to test the Navman GS3000 product over the course of a recent trip west.
First off you load in the starting position for your journey and your intended destination. The software then works out the best route for you.
Thanks to the GPS cradle that you place your palm pc in, the system is able to locate your position on the map. The cradle, or receiver, is quite heavy. But the benefits are that you can track your journey and your position to an accuracy of 5 metres, 95 per cent of the time, according to Navman.
However, be warned, the GPS receiver must be kept near the windscreen in order to get a location. We travelled for two days with our iPAQ on the passenger seat desperately trying to get a fix before discovering that it must be kept closer to the glass.
We took the system into rather uncharted territory on our travels and to our surprise once our position was established, try as we may we could not shake it off.
The one area where the system did seem to lose its way sometimes was when planning a route. It once estimated a journey time from Dublin to Castlebar of under 6 minutes, no mean feat with or without a navigational aid. Once rebooted it came to its senses.
The Navman GPS 3000 is also available with an upgrade package for an extra €240 offering voice navigation for a turn-by-turn instruction. We used another prototype voice activation system recently in Spain and found it very useful, avoiding the need to constantly take your eyes off the road to follow the route. With voice systems, the mapping becomes a useful back-up rather than the sole information provider.
The Navman system for iPACs is being sold by CharterNav GPS in Cork.
Some may prefer to wait until the system has been fully developed and any flaws are ironed out. However, for boys who like toys this is a useful accessory. It's also handy for those of us who can get lost in a car park.