does anyone have a laptop gps or can advise?

spaggy

OH is keen to get one... are they any good and what would people recommend?

Thanks : )

bigstoo

The short answer - yes, they are good. In my experience.

The long answer is that GPS can be a complex little puppy and it all depends on what you want to use it for.

A nice site to look at is http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

The sort of specs you want to be looking at are TTFF (time to first fix) and number of satelites.

The TTFF is basically how long it is likely to take between you switching the unit on (or plugging it in) and you being able to use it. Expect it to be 1 or 2 minutes. My first GPS was over 10(!).

The number of satelites is how many satelites the unit can talk to simultaneously. This tends to vary between 8 and something like 24. Don't be too concerned by this number as it's not particularly likely that there'll be more than 8 satelites visible in the sky anyway.

Personally, I use a Holux GPS that I bought off eBay for about £25. It's the best (for my purposes) I've used. It plugs into the CF slot in my PDA and can also be used in the PCMCIA slot of my laptop by using an adaptor. It's not as accurate as some GPSs on the market but has a very short TTFF and is plenty accurate for, say, TomTom.

Matt_Nixon

I use a Fortuna Bluetooth Clip-on GPS, which I can recommend. I use it with my laptop and PDA had it over 18 months now, once you've got your first fix you can put it in your pocket or glovebox and it will stay locked onto the sats.