Tuesday 15 December 2009

Beneficial Steps On Choosing A Handheld GPS

By Bart Oldman

As GPS technology has improved over the years the dimension of handheld GPS units has shrunk whilst performance and power have revved up. For outdoor enthusiasts for instance backpackers, bikers, cross-country skiers, and geo-cachers, this is a good news. These efficient units will help you see your direction, monitor where you are, and illustrate you the way back to where you came from.

Generally the handheld GPS units can be classified into two types. The GPS receiver is the strict and dedicated primary unit. This type of unit includes multiple screens that show you everything from the direction you are traveling to how long it's going to take you to get to your destination.

An additional handheld GPS kind is a PDA add-on. In essence this is a hardware which can be connected to the PDA and offers it GPS functionality. Although, this would appear to be a good add-on, a point to note here is that such plug-ins are quite large in size thus occupying valuable space, which is not the case to bother about in a full fledged GPS unit.

When you are buying a handheld GPS system then you should have a knowledge about these necessary things.

The main fact to decide before purchase is to plan how to use it. You should make sure of this because it is part of getting a good signal from the GPS satellite to your GPS device, it is all line of sight.

If you spend a lot of time in deep canyons, rugged mountainous areas, beneath dense foliage and tree cover, or even the skyscraper canyons of a city you may not always get a good signal. Typically there are plenty of satellites overhead to deal with this dilemma yet it's a problem that will happen and a thing you must consider.

When thinking about a hand-held unit, you must also inspect the kind of accessories and add-ons that are offered for a specific model. Are firmware updates easily available and easy to download and install? You should ask if additional data and maps can be loaded onto your unit, to meet your specific needs. Does your home computer or laptop has a software/hardware that lets you interface the GPS unit?

Most of the handheld systems out there will provide all these features, but you should find out about them beforehand. Selecting a handheld GPS based on your requirements can go a long way toward obtaining the ideal system for yourself.

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