Navigating the physical world in the digital age

Our children will wonder how we ever managed to find our way around town using just our heads and scraps of paper filled with squiggly lines.

Global Positioning System (GPS) devices have now entered the mainstream and will soon be as ubiquitous as cell phones. In fact, most of the time, they will be cell phones — Gartner research suggests that in two years more than 500 million mobile handsets sold each year will by GPS-enabled.

Of course, a market will still exist for other types of GPS devices. Most car manufacturers offer luxury navigation systems as add-ons, and as prices continue to fall these systems will eventually become a standard feature even in mid-tier vehicles.

And there will always be those who prefer simply to have a dedicated portable GPS device, either because they want the ability to take their navigation systems with them when they leave the car, or because they want more robust GPS functionality than what can be offered by a cell phone. Indeed, nearly 100 million discrete GPS units will be sold annually by 2010, according to Gartner.

In the Lab this month are five GPS units designed to alternate between personal and vehicle usage. They range from bare bones devices that can do little more than help you on your way from point A to point B (Mio’s Moov C200) to wunderkind gizmos that do almost everything except pay for your gas and meals along the way (TomTom’s Go 920).

Of course, the difference between the functionality offered by these units is reflected in their price tags, which range from $199 to $499. In our tests, they all did a respectable job of discerning a smart route from one location to another, and guiding us on our way. The question, really, is how much more you want your GPS to do apart from simple navigation.

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