My Wind Will Never Get Lost

Few years back, I was introduced to a new gadget area, the Global Positioning System or GPS. Many of my friends confuse GPS and GPRS. The common two questions I always get when I show them GPS, "Maxis got ar?" or "Celcom got ar?" and "How much?".

In layman term, as its name suggests, GPS tells you your position wherever you are in the globe relative to longitude and latitude coordinates. Nothing fun about GPS if without application. Combining routing and navigation system, that's different story out of it, well, if you are a geek. And, again and again I repeat to my friends, it does not connect you to internet like GPRS.

Just like most of the newbies into a new gadget arena, I invested a small amount of $ to try on GPS, in specific, the navigation and routing application to gauge if I would have long term interest on it. This was the initial setup of my GPS application...

With a Bluetooth GPSr (GPS receiver) paired with my PDA phone loaded with GPS software, Garmin Que and docked on a phone holder.

You'd know, it never fails when come to gadget, I got addicted to this GPS thingy :") Err... May be I should say I got lazier to use my brain, to plan my route before I start my journey. The GPS becomes so dependable for me, especially I work in the jammy KL. During traffic jam, I can just simply detour from my usual route to look for alternatives without getting lost in the city. That sometimes save me time if I manage to get onto a no-car route. Too bad, unlike US or Europe, there is no traffic info service integration with GPS in this BullehLand, else for sure I can save more petrol and time.

After some times, I felt like a pain to look into that tiny 3" PDA screen and I needed to lower the volume of the car player so that I could hear turning instruction from the sexy voice out from Que. Also, imagine how safe was I when I tried to change destination halfway by using stylus on that mini screen. So it's time to upgrade...

A 7" screen integrated car navigation. Double the screen size of the original setup and 13 times the price I paid for the bluetooth GPSr. Hehe... too much huh? :P It's all-in-one integrated with radio tuner, CD/DVD, photo viewing, MP3/WMV, iPod and of course the GPS. Bigger touch screen with full screen QWERTY keyboard and automatic mute when the navigation system gives directions.

But, since this is integrated into the car dashboard, I lose the mobility. What if I am not travelling with my lovely car? To maximize the Return Of Investment (ROI) for the bluetooth GPSr, I reuse it and partnership with my sweety Wind...

With portability and the screen size is 3" bigger than the car navigation system with 10" inch screen on Wind!

Hehe... this is nothing special and is just a peanut and laugh off for those GPS gurus who draw and compile the routing maps for beginner like me to use. I was excited as I feel like spending RM1600+ for my Wind is darn worthy while there are more "potentials" of hers to be discovered when I found more practical applications and software to install on it. I felt my heart was not beating when I parted with her for just a day recently due to my silly idiotic mistake. Heehee...

There are more and more netbooks flooding the market now. Asus Eee PC 1000, HP Mini 1000, Lenovo IdeaPad S10, Dell Mini 9, Acer Aspire One etc etc. Some of their outlook might be appealing, but if you look carefully the specifications, you will still see Wind beats most of them, if not all. Moreover, Santa Claus is sending Wind's sister U120 to town soon!!

Yet, I am still very loyal to my Wind and it's just a matter of time to unleash her potentials and may be I would turn her into a carputer in the future. Hmmm...