Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Portable Gps Navigation Systems to Fit Your Budget

By Brad Seabourne


The addition of portable GPS navigation in your vehicle is relatively inexpensive especially when compared to the overpriced dealership charge that comes when you order a factory navigation system. After market units use the most current technology and maps to help you get where you want to go with the greatest accuracy.

A portable GPS navigation system provides lots of options, besides giving directions. You can use all sorts of items, such as an iPod, cell phone and TV applications. Buying these items as add-ons is really the way to go. These systems provide more than just directions, though. Many of them attach to your windshield and run from the vehicle's battery. A big bonus of these systems is that they can go just about anywhere- just plug them in to the outlet in your car and go!

Some Garmin portable GPS units also have built-in batteries to provide you with navigation even without an external power source. The popular and versatile Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS Navigator comes with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that will last up to 8 hours on a single charge. Although it has a good size screen it is compact enough to fit easily in a pocket or purse. The Garmin Nuvi 350 Personal Travel Assistant provides much more than directions; it has an Mp3 player, an audio book player and much more.

One more type of GPS is referred as in-dash. It usually has a touch screen, allowing you manual entry of your destination information. Such a device can be installed in place of the radio that came with the car so that it is controlling the whole sound system.

With options like Bluetooth, iPod integration, satellite radio, and TV tuners, as well as systems that are designed to fit both standard, and large radios, you can build a system for any vehicle with all the options at a fraction of the cost of dealership installation.

If you put as much information into the GPS system as possible, it will be easier to find your location. Some maps are on the hard drive of the system, and you can just download the updated ones and put them onto the hard drive as updates. There are also actual maps, which are on a DVD the system can read. So you will have to purchase the new DVD maps so that you can stay up-to-date on new roads.

Although they are not always as easy to operate as an in-dash GPS system, the new portable GPS units are small, affordable and include powerful functionality. They include such features as internal, rechargeable batteries and pre-loaded North America map databases. Higher end models can have real-time traffic reporting which is becoming available on lower price units, although those often require additional hardware upgrades.

While they were once expensive, portable navigation systems have become affordable for everyone. Money spent on these systems is more than worth it when you consider all of the utility and fun that you get for the price. Most importantly, however, you will never have to stop for directions again with one of these systems.

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