Very fun article, not on GPS units ability to be GPS units, but about their lack of interest in playing nice with 3rd party software / drivers, and the very clever workarounds that can be done to overcome their shortsightedness. Read this article!
Was in Boston a few weekends ago, and our (decent Garmin) GPS system would lose it's signal with about 200 feet to go in each tunnel, and then would take 1-2 minutes to reconfigure itself which was typically too late to help us make the right exit. It was frustrating to say the least to have to memorize the route 4-5 steps ahead each and every time we entered a tunnel just in case it got confused (which is did early and often)<p>Why can't the unit 'remember' the route in case signal is lost or have some sort of 'tunnel' recognition mode to account for this? It's not like the 'Big Dig' is an obscure set of tunnels (or Boston an uncommon city) that just 'popped up' without warning.<p>/rant
The problem I always have with my GPS system is that it sucks if you know where you are actually going.<p>For example if I skip a step to take an exit(because I find it faster by using the next one), it'll spend the rest of the way trying to reroute me to go back to the step that I skipped. So I can be pulling into my driveway, and the system will be trying to send me back 50 miles to take that exit that it wanted me to take.<p>Granted I have the cheap $150 system, since I barely use it, so maybe the more expensive systems are smarter