I am sitting in my room at the Orcas Hotel on Orcas Island. While on vacation this week I had a chance to try out my Nokia N800 with my new Navibe portable GPS unit. Surprisingly, I discovered that this combination delivers better GPS performance than the N810. During this vacation we tested the two units side by side, and found that when a car was moving at 70 mph, the N810 had difficulty getting a GPS lock. The N810 could take ten minutes, while the Navibe unit linked to my N800 locked onto the satellites almost instantaneously (we own both a 800 and 810 so that both of my sons could Skype us this Summer while overseas). It is worth noting that the N810 was able to establish a GPS lock quickly if our car was not moving.
Obviously one wonders why the N800 outperforms the 810. My guess is the Navibe unit which my kids gave me for my birthday ($45) has a stronger GPS receiver than the embedded unit in the N810. Thus, if the N810’s keyboard is not a selling point for you … avoid the higher cost and take this route!
The entire prcess works quite well. I just program in some "favorites" and "way points", and even without a paid direction finder service like Wayfinder, my Nokia helped me navigate. If I ever get lost, I just enter the command find current location, and then zoom out to find a road that I recognize.
I leave you with some screenshots from my trip … the South Bay B&B at Lake Whatcom in the Cascades to Orcas Island … including the ferry ride. (this entire post was entered using my Nokia N800)(see some real photos of our trip to the San Juan Islands)
