Evidently the Columbus Dispatch has a quota on highway news articles.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/04/09/paper-map-going-way-of-public-telephone.html
Bertin, go send Vitale an email with all your freeway proposals for the next time they have a slow day at the office.
You mean people are peeing in them?
Either that, or they're just not as popular as they used to be. Besides, Mapquest and GPS navigation are the way to go in the technology-driven 21st century.
This is sad. I'm very much old-school when it comes to this kinda stuff. I love using paper maps and refuse to buy a GPS unit.
When I was on a plane ride a few months ago, I was looking at my large road atlas just reading maps for fun of different U.S. states. A woman sitting next to me on the plane, who had coincidentally been employed at Rand McNally, seemed to be impressed by the fact that I was reading an actual atlas.
It is a sad state of affairs that so many people don't know how to read maps anymore. They just blindly follow GPS units and don't have a grasp of the bigger picture with regard to where they are going. :-(
I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS. Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.
Post Merge: April 13, 2012, 07:48:02 PM
Ever been forced to take a rental car with one, and yelled at the GPS to shut up when it told you to go a stupid way?
Quote from: texaskdog on April 10, 2012, 03:32:20 PM
I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS. Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.
I still prefer their using a GPS to the dreaded "we'll just follow you" option. At 10 mph below the speed limit. And it's the end of the world if they're for a moment out of your sight.
GPS is handy in some ways and useless in others.
For example if I make a mistake in town I can take a quick look at the GPS to see if there's any side streets I can take to get me to the correct road. Where GPS is useless is when trying to find a route over large areas as zooming out reduces the detail to just the major roads. A paper map on the other hand retains its detail no matter how far away I look.
I always keep a paper atlas in the car and take one with me when driving abroad. If there's any areas I need in detail I will print a Google Map screengrab.
Almost of all my company's cable technicians have GPS units in their work trucks. One guy in particualr gets a paper city map for every town he goes to work in. If it's not in the paper map, he calls us to MapQuest/Google/Bing directions for him. This gets annoying. But, whatever. The really annoying part is when he chooses to ignore the directions we give him.
Paper maps are often out of date. The best luck I've had finding up-to-date city maps to beat online services like Google Maps is to try and find an official map on the town's official website. Not all towns have that, but they're a goldmine when you can find one (Manhattan, KS, coming immediately to mind, as Google Maps and MapQuest were sorely out of date last time I checked).
Quote from: kurumi on April 10, 2012, 03:49:29 PM
Quote from: texaskdog on April 10, 2012, 03:32:20 PM
I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS. Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.
I still prefer their using a GPS to the dreaded "we'll just follow you" option. At 10 mph below the speed limit. And it's the end of the world if they're for a moment out of your sight.
Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV. Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way. When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg. My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.
Quote from: hobsini2 on April 10, 2012, 06:34:57 PM
Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV. Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way. When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg. My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.
this must've been before cell phones. I'd done that a few times too... and we always made a backup plan of "find us at such and such a landmark in this town". If it was a town we'd never been to, it was the post office, as we figured it would be easy to find with local help. luckily it never came to that.
I also have an affinity for paper maps. No GPS will ever replace my 1927 AAA paper map of Michigan showing US 102. Nor will a GPS replace my MSHD maps from the 1950s and 1960s. That said, GPSs have their use.
Quotethis must've been before cell phones.
Doesn't matter. The area they went through has minimal cell phone service.
While I agree with AJ's passion for mapreading, I disagree with him on GPS units. True, people over-rely on them for directions, but they're very handy for tracking one's trips. It's also useful having a tablet with a built-in GPS and the ability to download and store numerous maps, including 7.5-series USGS topos (which I use especially for those areas that lack 3G coverage). This way, I only need to carry a tablet instead of a bunch of DeLormes or large atlases.
Quote from: froggie on April 11, 2012, 11:18:34 AM
Quotethis must've been before cell phones.
Doesn't matter. The area they went through has minimal cell phone service.
good point. In a pinch, that without a meet-up plan and shitty reception, my backup plan would be to go to a town, use a land line (they still have those, right?), and hope that the other party's cell phone
does have reception. At the very least, leave a voicemail.
Quote from: froggie on April 11, 2012, 11:18:34 AM
Quotethis must've been before cell phones.
While I agree with AJ's passion for mapreading, I disagree with him on GPS units. True, people over-rely on them for directions, but they're very handy for tracking one's trips. It's also useful having a tablet with a built-in GPS and the ability to download and store numerous maps, including 7.5-series USGS topos (which I use especially for those areas that lack 3G coverage). This way, I only need to carry a tablet instead of a bunch of DeLormes or large atlases.
I have to admit that, for me, if someone were to ever give me a GPS unit, the one thing I'd want to use it for would be to locate certain features like restaurants or attractions in different geographic areas. For instance, if I'm in a city I've never been before and I have a craving for Chili's, it would be nice to look at the GPS which will help me find a Chili's.
Even though that convenience would be nice, I'm very much a minimalist when it comes to stuff like GPS units and other forms of technology. People survived just fine before GPS units came into the picture, and I'm perfectly happy not owning one. I prefer to not depend on stuff like that. :-)
Quote from: agentsteel53 on April 10, 2012, 06:39:36 PM
Quote from: hobsini2 on April 10, 2012, 06:34:57 PM
Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV. Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way. When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg. My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.
this must've been before cell phones. I'd done that a few times too... and we always made a backup plan of "find us at such and such a landmark in this town". If it was a town we'd never been to, it was the post office, as we figured it would be easy to find with local help. luckily it never came to that.
We used to do that on Boy Scout trips when I was growing up–on the annual ski trip to Seven Springs up in Pennsylvania, for example, all the drivers were to stop at the McDonald's in Breezewood to regroup before we got on the Turnpike so we'd know if anyone had gotten lost (and, indeed, one year someone somehow did get lost, though I still have no idea how). It worked pretty well most of the time.
I have a built-in GPS unit in one car and I quite like it for various reasons. While I tend to know where I'm going and what roads I want, I find that on a long trip on a road I don't use regularly it's nice to have the thing giving me distance and ETA. I like having the "find nearest gas station" or "find nearest ATM" or whatever, especially if I'm on a more rural highway in an area I don't know. Not all states are as good as others about posting signs for gas and the like. Also, mine has a joystick control option, which makes scrolling very easy–if I'm stuck in traffic and I want to find an alternate route and the sat-nav lady doesn't seem to want to give me one, I can shove the joystick around looking at options. The other thing about my built-in unit is that its voice control also controls the radio and the climate control, which can be very convenient.
A GPS unit can never replace a map for giving you the big picture and I think there's always a good use for maps at home. I also keep a 2005-era Rand McNally atlas on which I highlight the major roads I've driven or travelled in North America and I continue to update that (I just don't feel the need to buy an updated one). But when I'm driving I just prefer not to mess with a paper map, and my wife is not particularly good at reading them while we're in the car so I prefer having the sat-nav as a backup instead of asking her to look at a map!
My wife has a portable Garmin that is nice (I gave it to her after she got lost driving home from work once!), but I like the built-in device better.
Incidentally, going down a totally separate GPS-related avenue, I recently downloaded a pedometer app for my iPhone. It uses the GPS to track how far you've walked and it will draw a map to show you where you've been. I rather like that, not because I've needed it for directions but because it gives a good picture of where some of the local trails go and the like. We visited my parents on Sunday and I was telling them about a walking trail they ought to explore sometime and it was quite convenient just to pull out the pedometer app and show them the map it had made.
Quote from: 1995hoo on April 11, 2012, 02:12:14 PM
I like having the "find nearest gas station" or "find nearest ATM" or whatever, especially if I'm on a more rural highway in an area I don't know.
I like this feature as well; I just need to tweak it sometimes so that the GPS tells me the nearest gas station going approximately
forward. If I have about 80 miles of gas left, I will take "go forward 50 miles" over "go back 30" any day.
You can pry my paper maps from my cold, dead fingers.
I don't have a vehicle GPS. I have one for hiking, but I don't really trust it and I prefer my topo map and compass. The GPS seems to be off by more than the specs say it should be off, and I haven't figured out why. Plus the screen is hard to read outdoors, and way too small to get the big picture.
Paper maps are also nice historical snapshots.
Back to the original post, I always liked it that Ohio counties had maps for each county, and IIRC it was the state law to make one. I sure wish Indiana would do that, the best I can usually do is get a map through the Chamber of Commerce from the main county seat. I have made it a goal to get one from each county, and luckly have gotten most of them. One county I was in recently, for Warrick County, I have a map for, but I was trying to get one that was updated. Unfortunently the chamber there stopped making maps, now you can access one online. Made me sick.
When I was growing up in Rawlins County, Kansas, my dad was a pastor of two congregations–one in town and one in the country. Back then, the rural roads were not named at all. The pastor before him had developed a database of church members and how to get to their farms. It would go like this: 3W2N1W, which would mean 3 miles west, then 2 miles north, then 1 mile west. Well, my dad was able to obtain a poster-sized map of the county from the courthouse, with every farm labeled by surname. You could just go up to the wall, skim the area the family lived in, and figure out your own route. Beat that, GPS!
Quote from: kphoger on April 11, 2012, 06:00:23 PMYou could just go up to the wall, skim the area the family lived in, and figure out your own route. Beat that, GPS!
how would you know, a priori, where to skim?
without a GPS, or a map
index, I wouldn't know the faintest way to get to the Johnson ranch because I don't even know where the Johnson ranch
is.
I'm not gonna stare at a map for hours, scouring grid square by grid square, as though it were some kind of a word search.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on April 10, 2012, 06:39:36 PM
Quote from: hobsini2 on April 10, 2012, 06:34:57 PM
Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV. Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way. When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg. My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.
this must've been before cell phones. I'd done that a few times too... and we always made a backup plan of "find us at such and such a landmark in this town". If it was a town we'd never been to, it was the post office, as we figured it would be easy to find with local help. luckily it never came to that.
Actually we both had cell phones but cell coverage sucks in the mountains of eastern West Virginia.
I will continue using real maps as long as I have a pulse. GPS tells you how to get to a location. That's it. Oh sure, it can find you the nearest Scarf 'n Barf in Podunk, USA, and prevent one from getting lost in an unfamiliar town, but it doesn't give you a feel for the area at all. There's no way to zoom out without loosing resolution. With a map, I can discover interesting places to check out that are sort of on the way. GPS can't do that. It doesn't know what features I might find interesting. It'll tell me where all the parks are within a 10 mile radius, for example, but it has no idea what kind of parks they are and if they're on a lake or stream or slapped up against a freeway.
With a map I can look at a town and see how it probably developed over the years. It gives me a sense of what kind of place it is instead of just a web of crisscrossing lines.
Very important to me, If I find a mistake on a map, I can use my white out pen and collection of ball points to correct it. When I find a mistake on my GPS, all I can do is curse at it and call its manufacturer an idiot.
I also have a huge problem with some of the routes the GPS thinks I should take. Those algorithms do not apparently exist in a world where Milwaukee has Lincoln Memorial Drive on the lakefront. And Garmin seems to think that "BR US 51" is spoken as "US 51 Branch".
Oh, and maps never run out of batteries or have problems finding satellites.
Why is this in the Midwest sub-fourm?
Quote from: on_wisconsin on April 11, 2012, 09:15:46 PM
Why is this in the Midwest sub-fourm?
Because the thread originated with an article in an Ohio newspaper and centered on Ohio's map industry.
What does Wisconsin have?
Nobody actually reads the articles. We just respond to the title.
Quote from: NE2 on April 11, 2012, 11:35:33 PM
Nobody actually reads the articles. We just respond to the title.
Kind of like Playboy.
Quote from: texaskdog on April 10, 2012, 03:32:20 PM
I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS. Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.
My wife calls me her human GPS. Even if she's driving somewhere I've never been before, she trusts my directions more than her Garmin.
Quote from: hobsini2 on April 11, 2012, 06:38:01 PM
Actually we both had cell phones but cell coverage sucks in the mountains of eastern West Virginia.
Actually we both had cell phones but cell coverage sucks in the mountains of eastern West Virginia.
FIFY, twice.
Quote from: hbelkins on April 12, 2012, 09:39:51 AM
Quote from: hobsini2 on April 11, 2012, 06:38:01 PM
Actually we both had cell phones but cell coverage sucks in the mountains of eastern West Virginia.
Actually we both had cell phones but cell coverage sucks in the mountains of eastern West Virginia.
FIFY, twice.
Cell coverage sucks.
Quote from: kkt on April 12, 2012, 12:12:00 PM
Cell coverage sucks.
more importantly, cell phone behavior sucks in the absence of signal. there should be an option for "retry an infinite number of times automatically, until success" in the absence of signal.
also, signal-seeking kills the battery. my phone, last weekend, went from 65% charge to 5% in
under an hour on AZ-98 and US-160 between Page and Kayenta.
the main solution is to be able to transmit a text/email to one tower, and then use another tower to query the network for the confirmation, and then be much less aggressive in signal-seeking.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on April 11, 2012, 06:13:48 PM
Quote from: kphoger on April 11, 2012, 06:00:23 PMYou could just go up to the wall, skim the area the family lived in, and figure out your own route. Beat that, GPS!
how would you know, a priori, where to skim?
without a GPS, or a map index, I wouldn't know the faintest way to get to the Johnson ranch because I don't even know where the Johnson ranch is.
I'm not gonna stare at a map for hours, scouring grid square by grid square, as though it were some kind of a word search.
Chances are, you would at least know which direction from town they lived in, or perhaps which other farmers they were within a few miles of. This was a county of fewer than 5000 people, after all. One New Year's, my parents were driving me to a friend's farmhouse, but they had since moved to a different house. So we started knocking on doors to find out from neighboring farmers where he had moved to. You know how hard it is to find a farmer awake at 11:00 on New Year's Eve???
Quote from: agentsteel53 on April 11, 2012, 06:13:48 PMhow would you know, a priori, where to skim?
without a GPS, or a map index, I wouldn't know the faintest way to get to the Johnson ranch because I don't even know where the Johnson ranch is.
I'm not gonna stare at a map for hours, scouring grid square by grid square, as though it were some kind of a word search.
A typical Kansas county--and Rawlins County is no exception--is 30 miles by 30 miles. Rawlins County is also in the shortgrass prairie part of the state, so landholdings tend to be large, usually on the order of one full section of 640 acres or one square mile. Kphoger's father probably knew the approximate location of his parishioners down to the nearest one-sixteenth part of the county, which leaves at most 60 or so names to check.
A fair number of Kansas counties--possibly all of them--publish not just county road maps, which show the alignment and surfacing type of roads under county jurisdiction, but also land ownership maps similar to what Kphoger describes for Rawlins County. I do not know if Sedgwick County publishes one (land ownership information is available in any case from the county GIS site), but I have a copy of one for Geary County (Junction City and environs) which I purchased years ago when I was doing my undergraduate degrees at KSU in the next county east. For that matter, KDOT also publishes county highway maps, though I am not sure how up-to-date these are compared to maps published by the counties and cities themselves.
It doesn't surprise me that Kphoger had to go to Manhattan, Kansas' municipal website to retrieve an up-to-date map. When I left KSU, Manhattan had a population of about 30,000; now it is about 60,000 and a freeway is under construction to connect it to I-70. Manhattan is now considered important enough to be shown (occasionally) on flight maps aboard planes plying the Heathrow-O'Hare route.
Quote from: Hot Rod Hootenanny on April 11, 2012, 11:31:47 PM
Quote from: on_wisconsin on April 11, 2012, 09:15:46 PM
Why is this in the Midwest sub-fourm?
Because the thread originated with an article in an Ohio newspaper and centered on Ohio's map industry.
What does Wisconsin have?
I did not mean for my comment to be taken as a personal slight. But the topic, since the first few posts, has evolved into a way more broad view of the subject.
Personally, I like paper maps much better then GPS devices. Having something tangible that can't crash or lose a signal is an advantage paper has over any cellphone/GPS/laptop that cannot be beaten.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on April 11, 2012, 06:13:48 PM
Quote from: kphoger on April 11, 2012, 06:00:23 PMYou could just go up to the wall, skim the area the family lived in, and figure out your own route. Beat that, GPS!
how would you know, a priori, where to skim?
without a GPS, or a map index, I wouldn't know the faintest way to get to the Johnson ranch because I don't even know where the Johnson ranch is.
I'm not gonna stare at a map for hours, scouring grid square by grid square, as though it were some kind of a word search.
I would! Minimizes the need to look up the map later on -- though I'll do it just the same because it's a map ;)
I cinched every mile on I-70 in 2010; twice I had to ask the state line rest area service representative where they kept the state maps because I wasn't able to locate them on display units. Why don't they stock state/local/regional maps along with the rest of the tourist attractions?
We had a nice thread going on this forum obtaining state maps via snail mail. Think we should do this again for 2012 and beyond.
I refuse to give in to a GPS unit. Most consumer ones are horrible. Truck/RV GPS units are better in my opinion, but I'd prefer paper maps.
Quote from: NE2 on April 09, 2012, 08:21:28 PM
You mean people are peeing in them?
Hah! An better analogy than a public telephone would be a phone book. When was the last time any of you used one?
Quote from: kurumi on April 10, 2012, 03:49:29 PM
Quote from: texaskdog on April 10, 2012, 03:32:20 PM
I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS. Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.
I still prefer their using a GPS to the dreaded "we'll just follow you" option. At 10 mph below the speed limit. And it's the end of the world if they're for a moment out of your sight.
Agree with both. Its like listening to my mother telling me directions. She wants to tell me I should have turned left when we're passing where I shoulda turned. So i tell her be quiet, we have technology now. But then at the same time when I'm the one in the passenger seat I wanna tell everyone where to go
Quote from: F350 on April 13, 2012, 03:17:48 AM
Quote from: NE2 on April 09, 2012, 08:21:28 PM
You mean people are peeing in them?
Hah! An better analogy than a public telephone would be a phone book. When was the last time any of you used one?
We have one in the garage. It's on the floor shoved under the front end of the snowblower to keep the auger blades off the floor because it's supposed to be better to store it with those off the floor.
Quote from: F350 on April 13, 2012, 03:17:48 AM
Hah! An better analogy than a public telephone would be a phone book. When was the last time any of you used one?
Yesterday.
Quote from: A.J. Bertin on April 10, 2012, 01:22:50 PM
It is a sad state of affairs that so many people don't know how to read maps anymore. They just blindly follow GPS units and don't have a grasp of the bigger picture with regard to where they are going. :-(
I've noticed completely the opposite. 10 years ago I would regularly encounter people who would tell me they had no sense for maps. Nowdays, with online mapping being common and everyone carrying what amounts to a world street atlas in their pockets on their phones, I rarely hear that.
Now I will agree that people have a worse sense of direction than they used to. Just because they can read a map doesn't mean they're good at mentally keeping track of where they are when they're blindly following their GPS.
I use my GPS mainly when I fly somewhere. If I'm getting off a plane in a city I've never been to at 11 at night and have to drive to a hotel on the far side of the city, a GPS is indispensable IMO. It frees me up from having to juggle a page with written directions, in the dark, all while trying to read street signs in places that for some reason forgot to install them. They're also extremely useful for figuring out which generic looking office to go to the next morning when I only have a street address, the buildings all look alike, the street numbers aren't posted on the buildings, and the town has a strict restrictions on signage so the company logo isn't prominently displayed.
For long distance travel, I don't feel the need to use one.
Like a few others here, I've never used a GPS but have always used road maps or atlases. It's even more refreshing to see that many of those who responded similarly are (assuming everyone's age profile is true & current) actually younger than I.
The techy-est map-related item I've used is either Mapquest and/or Bing Maps and even then, it's alongside my maps (most of which are from AAA).
Many still refer to me as the human-GPS. I have had one or 2 friends call me to get better directions because they either misinterpreted their GPS or it gave them bogus info.
Back to the topic at hand, while I can easily see some states cut back on offering paper maps as a means to save money; I wouldn't necessarily declare paper road maps and atlases dead just yet.
Quote from: F350 on April 13, 2012, 03:17:48 AM
Quote from: NE2 on April 09, 2012, 08:21:28 PM
You mean people are peeing in them?
Hah! An better analogy than a public telephone would be a phone book. When was the last time any of you used one?
The last time I ordered pizza, I'd guess about a month ago.
Quote from: F350 on April 13, 2012, 03:17:48 AM
An better analogy than a public telephone would be a phone book. When was the last time any of you used one?
June of 2009. I was home alone, the power went out, and was looking up the number to call the electric company to report an outage. The trickiest part was finding where the hell my mother had put the phone book. After a solid 20 minutes of looking, I found one under a pile of other stuff in her office, unopened from when it had been deposited in our mailbox a couple years prior. More recent annual deliveries had gone straight into the recycling bin. Fortunately, the number for CL&P in it was still good!
People get surprised when I tell them I don't have a GPS, especially if they know how often I'm going someplace I don't usually go. But I don't need one. I prefer to do my own navigation manually using just a map. I keep a Rand McNally atlas in my car to look things up with. And if I want a more detailed view, I use the Google Maps app on my phone. I'm not averse to technology, I'm just averse to having a computer figure out for me something which I am perfectly capable of easily figuring out on my own - hell, I am
more capable of figuring out on my own than my computer is. Besides, I need to maintain a conscious concept of where I am and where I am going. I am not comfortable blindly following anyone or anything, the way all too many people seem to be.
It's amazing and honestly rather worrying how utterly helpless people become when all of a sudden their Garmin doesn't work. I once had a woman who'd just gotten off the highway and then had her GPS fritz out on her need me to direct her how to get back on the highway - exactly the reverse of the way she'd just came. I'm sorry, I don't care how good your little nav computer is, if you are clearly not paying attention to where the fuck you're going that is just pathetic.
I use both paper maps and online mapping when I am planning a trip. When I am on a trip, I use paper maps exclusively when I am by myself. I don't even own a GPS system, but I am sometimes with somebody who has one. I would hate to have to use GPS on a trip without paper maps. You just can't get the perspective with GPS that you can get with paper maps.
I also hate how people have become so GPS and online mapping reliant for routing purposes. I do sometimes check online map routing just as a suggestion or sometimes for a quick computation of mileage for a long trip. But I would never rely solely on a route given to me by an online mapping service. Not only do I trust my own evaluation better, but it's more fun for me to plan my own route.
Quote from: F350 on April 13, 2012, 03:17:48 AM
Quote from: NE2 on April 09, 2012, 08:21:28 PM
You mean people are peeing in them?
Hah! An better analogy than a public telephone would be a phone book. When was the last time any of you used one?
I was fishing through a 1920 and then a 1961 phone book back on Wednesday.
Quote from: PHLBOS on April 13, 2012, 02:06:06 PM
Like a few others here, I've never used a GPS but have always used road maps or atlases. It's even more refreshing to see that many of those who responded similarly are (assuming everyone's age profile is true & current) actually younger than I.
My age profile is indeed correct. I am 32 and refuse to own a GPS unit. I too like the fact that I'm not the only younger person who feels this way.
Quote from: PHLBOS on April 13, 2012, 02:06:06 PM
The techy-est map-related item I've used is either Mapquest and/or Bing Maps and even then, it's alongside my maps (most of which are from AAA).
I enjoy using Google Maps when I'm sitting at home looking at my computer. I like to see the suggested routes and what the approximate mileage/time is for those routes. If I need the detail of a cities I'm going to on a trip, I just print off the maps and bring them with me alongside my atlases and paper maps.
Quote from: PHLBOS on April 13, 2012, 02:06:06 PM
I wouldn't necessarily declare paper road maps and atlases dead just yet.
I certainly hope you're right. :-)
Quote from: Duke87 on April 13, 2012, 07:06:37 PM
People get surprised when I tell them I don't have a GPS, especially if they know how often I'm going someplace I don't usually go. But I don't need one. I prefer to do my own navigation manually using just a map. I keep a Rand McNally atlas in my car to look things up with. And if I want a more detailed view, I use the Google Maps app on my phone. I'm not averse to technology, I'm just averse to having a computer figure out for me something which I am perfectly capable of easily figuring out on my own - hell, I am more capable of figuring out on my own than my computer is. Besides, I need to maintain a conscious concept of where I am and where I am going. I am not comfortable blindly following anyone or anything, the way all too many people seem to be.
I'm exactly the same way... except that I don't have a smartphone. If I need the detail to a city, I just print out the maps from Google Maps and bring them with me on my trip. I would much rather figure something out for myself than have a GPS or a computer figure it out for me.
Quote from: Duke87 on April 13, 2012, 07:06:37 PM
It's amazing and honestly rather worrying how utterly helpless people become when all of a sudden their Garmin doesn't work. I once had a woman who'd just gotten off the highway and then had her GPS fritz out on her need me to direct her how to get back on the highway - exactly the reverse of the way she'd just came. I'm sorry, I don't care how good your little nav computer is, if you are clearly not paying attention to where the fuck you're going that is just pathetic.
Amen to that. It always amuses me when I hear stories on the news about idiots who rely on their GPS units which tell them to turn onto a railroad track or into a body of water. "That's what my GPS told me to do!!!" Morons.
I do not have a GPS, or much desire to buy one, though if I won one in a contest or something it'd be kind of neat.
Occasionally my girlfriend will get directions to somewhere from the Google Maps on her iPhone, but fortunately if I point out issues with them she will usually listen to me and not the phone. :)
From the comments posted here, I'm getting the impression that when most of you hear GPS, you think of the commonly available navigation units such as Garmin or TomTom. While Garmins and TomToms are indeed GPS units, GPS is a much broader category than that. Any piece of gear that can receive and decode the signals sent by the GPS satellites is, technically speaking, a GPS unit. This includes iPads and most recent smartphones. If you have a smartphone less than a few years old (especially one running Android or an iPhone newer than the "3") or an iPad, then you have a GPS unit.
I won a Garmin unit a few years back and it sat in the box unopened for 2 years. I had never used it for the same reasons others have cited. I had intentions to sell it, but had never found a buyer. I got a use for it about 6 months ago when the instrument panel on my old beater truck crapped out. (Only the temp gauge works, thank god for that.) I use the GPS for a speedometer. It isn't worth fixing the instrument panel on an 18 year old truck that I bought for $500 a few years ago. Since I had already won the Garmin and it wasn't being used, I considered it a free repair. I have the unit duct taped right over the speedometer.
As far as navigation. I love maps and I certainly hope it's a long time before they die. If I'm going somewhere far that I've never been to before, I'll use online maps to plan my route. I'll print the maps or jot myself down directions if necessary. If someone gives me verbal directions, I'll use my paper or online maps to confirm things and see that it makes sense and is a viable route.
I use Google Maps a lot. OK, I'll just be honest: I'm a Google Maps junkie. Not only do I often print out the Google map when I'm going to a new town, I will sometimes even import the map to MSpaint and edit it to my own liking. I can then add pins and intermediate distances just like a normal road atlas, except at the scale that I need. Other times, I will display Google Maps on one monitor and MSpaint on the other monitor (I have a split screen at work), and freehand a map.
Quote from: kphoger on April 14, 2012, 10:27:59 AM
I use Google Maps a lot. OK, I'll just be honest: I'm a Google Maps junkie. Not only do I often print out the Google map when I'm going to a new town, I will sometimes even import the map to MSpaint and edit it to my own liking. I can then add pins and intermediate distances just like a normal road atlas, except at the scale that I need. Other times, I will display Google Maps on one monitor and MSpaint on the other monitor (I have a split screen at work), and freehand a map.
I use Google Maps all the time too. Hardly a day goes by without using it. But I usually use it in conjunction with a paper map or atlas. I like the close up views that Google Maps offers compared with the wide perspective that a paper map offers.
Quote from: froggie on April 14, 2012, 07:15:10 AM
From the comments posted here, I'm getting the impression that when most of you hear GPS, you think of the commonly available navigation units such as Garmin or TomTom. While Garmins and TomToms are indeed GPS units, GPS is a much broader category than that. Any piece of gear that can receive and decode the signals sent by the GPS satellites is, technically speaking, a GPS unit. This includes iPads and most recent smartphones. If you have a smartphone less than a few years old (especially one running Android or an iPhone newer than the "3") or an iPad, then you have a GPS unit.
Also, I've discovered, the 4th generation iPod Touch.
Quote from: froggie on April 14, 2012, 07:15:10 AM
From the comments posted here, I'm getting the impression that when most of you hear GPS, you think of the commonly available navigation units such as Garmin or TomTom. While Garmins and TomToms are indeed GPS units, GPS is a much broader category than that. Any piece of gear that can receive and decode the signals sent by the GPS satellites is, technically speaking, a GPS unit. This includes iPads and most recent smartphones. If you have a smartphone less than a few years old (especially one running Android or an iPhone newer than the "3") or an iPad, then you have a GPS unit.
I doubt anyone here thinks that my Garmin eTrex is a affront to road atlases any more than a Garmin G2000 is causing the decline of modern aviation.
Quote from: A.J. Bertin on April 10, 2012, 01:22:50 PM
This is sad. I'm very much old-school when it comes to this kinda stuff. I love using paper maps and refuse to buy a GPS unit.
When I was on a plane ride a few months ago, I was looking at my large road atlas just reading maps for fun of different U.S. states. A woman sitting next to me on the plane, who had coincidentally been employed at Rand McNally, seemed to be impressed by the fact that I was reading an actual atlas.
It is a sad state of affairs that so many people don't know how to read maps anymore. They just blindly follow GPS units and don't have a grasp of the bigger picture with regard to where they are going. :-(
As the article says, however, plenty of people still like to hold a map or atlas in their hands, so I believe paper road maps will always be available for those who want them. Same thing with books. :coffee: