Mariners rejoice, today Garmin announced a newly enhanced GPS receiver to aid in decking out your dinghy this upcoming season. Serving both practical and frivolous purposes, you can pick up this newly announced unit without the guilt associated with buying a device that only serves to entertain… if that kind of guilt affects you.
Garmin is towing the line, with the GPSMAP 640 touchscreen portable. It comes preloaded with comprehensive street and marine charts, but with a major change in the form factor. Garmin was looking to merge the look and usability of their popular Nüvi series with this highly specialized, albeit dated looking, GPSMAP portable.
For this refresh, Gamin has slimmed down the case, ditched the antenna, and beefed up the screen. The end product looks striking similar to every other PND out there, but boasts an intuitive, waterproof, 5.2” touchscreen display, with an 800 x 480 resolution, surrounded by a much thinner beveled case, and tons of tidbits for the sailor.
The docking cradles, that compliment the system, are specific to the application. Dock the unit in the marine cradle and the GPS starts up in marine mode, and vise versa for the car. This certainly beats scouring the menus to change modes.
Data presented on this meticulous monitor could save you some major headaches. Garmin’s BlueCharts has been upgraded to include shaded depth contours, port plans, wrecks, and restricted areas. Upgrade again, to BlueCharts g2 Vision, and get automatic chart plotting.
Seafarers will find endless uses for this detailed navigational information presented on the GPSMAP 640, but add the optional XM radio/weather satellite receiver, and you’ll be good to sail the seven seas endlessly - without incident or running out of tunes.
Press Release
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Monday, October 6, 2008
Seafaring Just Got Easier - Thanks to Garmin
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Clarion MAP780 using iGO My Way 8
Clarion's two newest Personal Navigation Devices the MAP680 & MAP780, from Clarion's German site, reverberated through the vascular system that is the blog-o-sphere by way of Navigadget on Tuesday.
These impressive GPS units, that were announced in April and include iGO 3D mapping software, have also made their there way to Youtube. Showing the device in action, the video demonstrates a no-joke navigator with mad 3D rendering skills provided by iGO's My Way 8 software, a 3D map rendering application designed for portables.
This upgrade gives you access to so much terrain/building mapping data you may never have to look at the road again. Well, there's still that bit concerning other cars and people getting in your way. Although, these units will have you wanting to keep them in front of you.
Clarion has included all the functionality you'd expect from a high-end PND, but they also added some you might not.
These knowledgeable navi's boast SMS (texting) capabilities, and can connect to a streaming audio service. The differences in the units are mainly disc space and what maps are loaded on those flash memories.
The Clarion MAP680 includes regional map information only, the region in this case is Germany so that includes four countries on it's 1GB internal storage. The MAP680's partner in 3D map rendering touts quite a bit more mapping data, 43 European countries are stored on it's 2GB Memory. Both devices can be expanded and accept SD cards.
No word on when Clarion will grace us with an American version of these mapping moguls but the software is available, a manufacturer just needs to bring it to market in the US.
Panasonic Strada CN-GP50U Portable Navigator w/ 5" Screen
Pioneer AVIC-S2 Portable Smart GPS Navigation with 3.5" Touch Display
Uniden GPS402 Portable In-Vehicle Navigation System features: 4" EZ Touch display
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Archos 605 Becomes the Ultimate Travel Companion
A week from today, Archos plans to announce they'll be adding GPS to their already feature heavy personal media player, the Archos 605.
Unfortunately, for those of us in the New World, the news of this announcement comes from the island nation of Great Britain, via Pocket-lint. So, you shouldn’t expect this GPS functionality stateside until at least the end of the summer; by then the ‘hommes et femmes’ over at Archos should be able to hammer out an agreement with a GPS provider, in the United States, to become their partner in mapping.
Who knows really? We’re talking about a French company after all. They might get too caught up drinking wine and eating baguettes to remember about us silly Americans.
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
The Portable Aviation GPS, Fully Realized
Aeronautical GPS navigation just got a booster shot, from none other than Garmin. Garmin unleashed the first aviation GPS portable to combine satellite weather data with color moving maps and terrain alert with the GPSMAP 396.
Now, the newest member of the GPSMAP fold, the GPSMAP 496, comes fully decked out with access to more information than 00 can get their hands on.
SafeTaxi which offers position diagrams for 650 US airports can help you make your taxi less hectic. An airport directory featuring details like the phone numbers of fuel services and ground transportation, as well as information on thousands of airports in the US, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean give you the tools to meticulously plan your trip or the ability to make it up as you go along.
Quicker, higher resolution graphics and more visual reference information such as terrain, obstacle, and private airports sites serve to provide the aviator with the peace of mind that most emergency can be successfully avoided, and if encountered can be dealt with effectively.
Weather satellite data is collected by the GXM30 antenna which as the name suggests uses XM weather feeds to display weather maps. The antenna can also receive XM radio programming; this entertainment option adds a lighter side to the usually strictly business GPSMAP 496.
Since pilots will be toting around the unit once on the ground, Garmin figured they might as well integrate City Navigator NT and TIS traffic alerts for their earth bound ramblings too. This comprehensive GPS’s highly developed since of direction, and bevy of useful features means it could truly be, “The worlds most highly evolved aviation portable”.
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