Sunday, October 02, 2005

Where To Go!

As some of you will probably know by now, I took delivery of a lovely new Garmin i3 Streetpilot yesterday which that nice Mrs Maplin (I know it’s Mrs because, after I ordered it online, she rang me up to say they were currently out of stock and would I mind waiting or could they cash my cheque, thus ensuring the reservation for me of one that would form part of an imminent delivery? Of course, it might have not actually been Mrs Maplin as I have no knowledge of Mr Maplin’s marital status but allow me to have this one possibly inaccurate but perfectly reasonable assumption in my dotage) let me buy off her and, don’t get me wrong, it is a marvel of modern technermology and I can set it to speak to me in several languages. Not all at once, of course, that would be counter-productive, not to mention unintelligible. With regard to the voice, the only thing I can specify is the style and I have chosen, not surprisingly, British English. However, there is no option to choose the sex of the voice, so I find myself in the continuing life scenario of following female instructions. Back to the Streetpilot. There are other settings that can be, er, set, and one which did intrigue me somewhat was the ability to indicate preferences for what those lovely people at Garmin call ‘avoidances’. You can tell the device to ignore the following in calculating your route: Toll Roads, Carpool Lanes (what the hell are they? damn merkins! Sorry, Scott!), U-turns and Unpaved Roads. But the one which threw me was Highways. If anyone can tell me why, when using an electronic GPS automotive navigational aid, you might need (or indeed be able) to avoid highways in driving from point A to point B (unless, possibly, those two points are a few yards apart on a pavement – doh! sidewalk – although why you would want to drive a few yards along a pavement/sidewalk, I’m not sure), please let me know. There is a feature to set the type of vehicle used, but Jet Fighter, Helicopter or, come to that, any other type of aircraft, are conspicuous by their absence. I have tried it out two or three times and, although I totally disagreed with the route to the Chinese takeaway it told me to take from my house (even though it helpfully avoided Carpool Lanes), I think I’m in love with it and I am fairly anxious to have its babies, so Mr and Mrs Maplin’s (still in assumption mode) original instruction worked!