GPS Book Review - Never get lost again!

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Exploring GPS A Users Guide - Book Review

Before we start - we don't own a GPS unit as yet and we purchased this book to hopefully avoid wasting money on buying the "wrong model" as we so often do! We got the A'van right though! The review copy is a second edition and over 10,000 copies have been sold. It doesn't actually have an author as such as it is published by the Department of Information Technology and Management - Land and Property Information by Simon McElroy, Ian Robins, Glenn Jones and Doug Kinlyside. We are pleased to report that the book is quite easy to read as long as you don't skip chapters. The jargon is clearly explained right away and you are put at ease simply because of the brilliant cartoons. The old technology versus the new, Red Riding Hood one below is typical! To avoid shooting ourselves in the foot we will avoid the technical stuff here! We must confess though that we had no idea how complex the behind the scenes technology is.

In case you are wondering just what GPS is, it stands for Global Positioning System. In a nutshell, it lets you know your fairly exact position anywhere on earth. It does this by comparing information from various satellites. We were blissfully unaware that it can also tell you the time, your speed of travel and fairly exact height. We like this comment from the book :-

"What do I need to get GPS to work for me?

"You need only two things. A GPS receiver and your brain. Both come in a great variety of shapes, sizes and capabilities".

This is typical of the totally non-intimidating way the book is written. If you want to get down to the absolute nitty gritty, all the technical info is also readily available. The authors, in our view, have achieved the perfect balance as we have come away from the book confident that yes we will go ahead with purchasing a unit as soon as we save up!

So why would you want to buy a GPS unit? If you only stay on the bitumen you would think that normal maps would do you OK. Not so. In many travel articles you will notice they give the GPS co-ordinates - one of our main reasons for looking at a unit. It's best use though is in finding free camping spots where there is no sign posting. As more and more rest areas are closed to overnight stays the harder to find spots are really going to come into their own. The motorhome people are leading the way in this area and most of the private sites list exact co-ordinates allowing you to easily find any campsite so identified.

The book is very well made, it will fit in the glove box, is printed on glossy paper, is 126 pages and has a just adequate cover (we will be covering ours though) We picked up our copy at the Caravan and Camping Show in Brisbane and it cost $20.00. You can get more information by email mapsales@ditm.nsw.gov.au or simon.mcelroy@ditm.nsw.gov.au. We have seen it in most large camp shops and 4WD outlets.

We suggest that buying this book is the right move before racing out and buying a GPS receiver. It does cover all the types and certainly makes you look ahead as to how exactly you will use it. It is no use for instance buying a Hyundai Sonata because it has an excellent GPS, if further down the track you might take up bush walking and then need a mobile unit. The method of linking to your computer is another important issue, as many models don't do this easily. Had we not got this book we would no doubt have raced out and bought an entry level receiver and then after learning to drive it, realised that for just $200.00 more we could have purchased a unit with downloadable maps straight into our laptop. Watch for future articles on GPS research as we spend more money!

Back to the book - we absolutely recommend it!

Bob Eustace