Thread: GPS sales hit No. 1
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sevo is offline sevo
2007-12-22 , 19:56
Posts: 190 | Thanked: 21 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#6
Originally Posted by YoDude View Post
Previously you could spend upward to $1500 for a device but still have to wait like a schmuck and waive it around for 3 to 5 minutes to get a position. They were also no good in city "canyons" where people needed them most.
Not to mention these older "portable devices" were huge and heavy to accommodate batteries that would give them decent usability.
It was not quite as bad - in 96, when I got my first GPS, I spent $300 for a 280g device that went through 4xAA NiCd in four hours, would refuse to work in urban canyons (indeed any street with more than four-floor buildings) or underneath a tree, and had a four line text display and direction indicator with an arrow moving in 15 degree increments. TTFF was painfully slow - 8-15 minutes, but once it got going and had lots of clear sky above it, it was quite as good and reliable as my current SIRFIII mouse.