Nuvi Saves the Day

So we were in Boston for New Years, which I have stated already. Of course the one bad thing about going to Boston (or any where for that matter) for a holiday is that you have to come home (with everyone else in the world who went where you did). Usually we can time things so that we don't get stuck in too much traffic, but there is almost always some traffic.

I have to say that the Nuvi performed wonderfully again for this trip. We hit a little bit of traffic at the I-90/I-84 Interchange where there is usually traffic on heavy holiday travels. This is due mainly to the number of people without EZ-Pass or Fast Lane. On a side note it amazes me that people still don't have EZ-Pass or Fast Lane or what ever. No I can understand people who live in places out side the system, but if you have MA, NY, NJ, or PA Plates and no EZ-Pass you should be forced to drive backwards to your destination on secondary roads. It really doesn't matter how infrequently you use it, it just makes everything easier. As this traffic wasn't too bad and I can blow by almost everyone because I DO have EZ-Pass there was really no need to explore an alternate option.

The rest of it was pretty smooth sailing until the dreaded merge. For those of you unfamiliar with the merge just think of two 3-4 lane highways coming together into one 3 lane road. This almost always spells disaster whenever there is heavy volume. This is compounded a bit by the fact that maybe a mile after the merge there is a rest area so people try to get from the far left to the right to exit for the rest area.

At the first rest stop on the Garden State Parkway I decided to finally enter in my traffic subscription. I had the number but entering the code is laborious task, perfect for taking up time at a full service station in NJ. Am I glad I entered the number. I will admit that Nuvi didn't tell me anything I couldn't already have guessed, but it was good to know to expect it.

As we approached the NJ Turnpike Nuvi told us that the car lane (Nuvi usually recommends that we take the car lane) was backed up and I could avoid this. Now from experience I know that usually the car lane backs up a lot more than the Truck lane. I think this has to do with the fact that the Truck lane drops to 2 lanes before it enters the merge and then only one of those 2 lase actually merge. This allows trucks to sort of glide through the merge without having to actually merge. It also tends to keep the truck lane moving a bit.

We as almost always choose the truck lane no matter what the traffic situation is. Nuvi some times picks up on this (this time it did) and after a little bit Nuvi tells us that the truck lane has building volume as well. We have also discovered from experience that usually once traffic gets bunched at the merger it take a few miles for it to recover as well. so usually just about the time we are ready to get off at the PA turnpike traffic is moving well again. So we asked Nuvi to avoid the traffic.

Ass we approach the first wall of traffic Nuvi has us get off at the next exit (about 1/4 mile ahead. We take a NJ State highway (speed limit was 45-50 most of the way) with a few traffic lights but the stops weren't worse than what we probably would have experienced on the Turnpike. We end up on 195 headed to Trenton then, after a brief user error, ended up on route 1 South towards the PA turnpike. We were seated for dinner near our house by about 8 PM. Great Job Nuvi!

Of course I can't say this way was faster or slower but it felt faster, which is important. And I was not contributing to the traffic jam buy getting off the highway. I can't wait until we have smart vehicles that know where we are going and can correlate our destination with the destinations of the other cars on the road to pick the best route (heck I would even let it drive me there).

My New Toy a Nuvi 660

My new toy arrived yesterday. So far I am impressed with the Nuvi 660. I have yet to use it for navigation, but I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly and easily it paired with my Treo. When I started looking for a GPS device I quickly learned that there are tons out there. Each with pros and cons. There good thing is there seem to be a ton of very good devices on the market.

I had narrowed my choice down before vacation to the Nuvi 360 and the C550 from Garmin and the TomTom 510 or 910. Aside from the navigation features I really wanted something that would work with the Bluetooth on my phone. I have a Bluetooth headset, but I hate driving with it in my ear. It is comfortable enough, I just don't like having on my head the entire time. I was marginally attracted to the mp3 capabilities of the devices.

Fast forward to my return from vacation. I find out that while I was away Garmin had announced a new Nuvi. While away I spent many hours agonizing over which device to get. I finally made my wife to convince me to get the Nuvi. The other devices had similar feature sets, but the nuvi had a better form factor. The nuvi was more portable and I do travel a lot.

I do some more price checking to see if the prices on the 360's have dropped and low and behold, both TomTom and Garmin have announced new devices. TomTom released the ONE, which was interesting, but didn't have the phone capability I was looking for. Garmin had released the Nuvi 660 it had all of the features of the 360, but it included an integrated FM traffic receiver to get live traffic info. This was actually the feature the made it a tough call between the C550 and the Nuvi 360. I had chosen form-factor over traffic. But here was my chance to have my cake and eat it too.

So lets hope my new toy doesn't lead me astray. Now that I have a navigation device telling me how to get places I wonder if I will directions will be come like phone numbers. I can't for the life of me remember the phone numbers of my closest friends. I can barely get out my home and cell phone number when asked. I wonder how long it will be before we all just hop in the card and tell it where we want to go with out any real idea of where we are actually going?