Text 1971, 103 rader
Skriven 2006-06-06 08:01:00 av Dale Shipp (1:261/1466.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Dave Sacerdote
Ärende: Re: A Visit With The For
================================
 -=> On 06-05-06  10:43,  Dave Sacerdote <=-
 -=> spoke to Dale Shipp about Re: A Visit With The For <=-

 DSh> Wonder if the Magellan would have helped?   I expect that 
 DSh> Burton had it in his car.

 DSac> Okay, now I'm going to tell The Magellan Story.

 DSac> On Friday night, Burt drove when we went to Empire Buffet.  On the
 DSac> way home, we set up the Magellan and burt punched in my address so
 DSac> we could see how it worked, and it was pretty cool except for a
 DSac> small glitch in the database that wanted to send us around the
 DSac> block instead of into my driveway.  Minor, and up to then pretty

   Magellan and every other mapping program I have seen has problems
   with exact locations of street addresses.  Our house number is 5351,
   but Magellan, MS Streets and Trips, and Delorme all put that address
   a couple hundred yards away from where it really is.  You can see
   what I mean if you have a mapping program.  The correct location is
   at the intersection of Iron Pen and Hesperus.

 DSac> much the only flaw I saw in the software.  I was pretty impressed,
 DSac> actually, to the point of checking out prices (it wouldn't be a
 DSac> necessity for me, though, just a toy, so I can't justify it.)

   There are other flaws, and not unique to Magellan.  We also have a
   Delorme GPS program.   It has a tendency to map you off of the road
   you are traveling on.  Sometimes it tells you to turn when there is
   not turn to be had.   Both errors are passed off by them as being
   inaccuracies in the map.   They would probably have you attempt to
   cross the river on that bridge that has not been there since the
   30's:-}}

 DSac> Anyway, the next day, to go to Essex, I suggested that we bring
 DSac> the Magellan with us since I remembered last year and having a
 DSac> little difficulty finding the place back then.  The only thing
 DSac> Madge needs is a powerpoint - it's completely portable.

   Ours is called Marty:-}}  There is a version that runs on batteries
   and is really portable -- e.g. you could take it back packing.

 DSac> I asked Burt first to plug in the address for Office Depot in
 DSac> Manchester and promised I'd follow the turn-by-turn voice.  The
 DSac> original instructions, when we previewed them, were exactly the
 DSac> route I normally take to that shopping area; but for some reason
 DSac> the wrong adress loaded from the phone book (I believe it was a

   We have found that the mapping programs have difficulty with stores
   that are located in shopping centers.  One reason is that the mailing
   address is disjoint from the actually geo-position and that the
   parking lot street is not on the map.

 DSac> PEBKAC error*) and it took us off the highway and onto a deadend
 DSac> street in Windsor.  Checking the destination programmed, however,
 DSac> soon showed that we had told Madge to bring us to some guy's
 DSac> house on the dead end street.  [Lynn said we should knock on the
 DSac> guy's door and demand to know why our GPS had brought us to
 DSac> him, heh.]  We set the correct destination and then the only
 DSac> problem was that Madge wanted us to get off the freeway, follow
 DSac> a US route for 1/2 a mile, and then get back on the same freeway.

  That might have been a touch shorter.   But it should have been
  compensated for by having a freeway speed faster than highway speed
  (which itself is faster than city street speed).   You can get some
  really wierd routes if you tell it to map "shortest" route versus
  fastest route.

 DSac> The Essex Elementary School is in the village of Centerbrook.
 DSac> We had no street address for the school (and none was noted on
 DSac> the signs or the tickets) and when Madge searched the database

   They certainly should have included directions for the school on
   their web page, or at least an address.  They had directions to the
   Yacht club, but that was no help.

 DSac> * - PEBKAC:  Problem Exists Between Keypad And Chair

  aka OHE (Operator Headspace Error).

  Bottom line is that Marty (or Madge) can help, but you cannot depend
  on them completely.   I recently looked up a clients address in the
  mapping programs and all of them got it very wrong.   The problem was
  that the street was not on the maps since it was (a) new, and (b) in
  an office park.   But I still used the GPS to get there based on the
  company's directions from their web site.   Since I was driving alone,
  it was a big help in making the turns at the proper place without
  having to worry about referring to a map and exit numbers etc.

  We rarely use it for local trips where we know what we are doing, only
  for going to strange places.  It is much nicer than the laptop GPS
  that has to sit in someone's lap all the time:-}}

                               Dale Shipp
                  fido_261_1466 (at) comcast (dot) net
                              (1:261/1466)



... Shipwrecked on Hesperus in Columbia, Maryland. 00:23:03, 06 Jun 2006
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