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We're toolin' up I-95 in Sean and Lorna's Jeep Cherokee on our way to New York City. I plug in the fat yellow plastic box housing the TripMate GPS unit, toss it on the dash, and plug it into the modem/printer port of my PowerBook 1400. After booting up DeLorme's Street Atlas 4.0, I choose "Monitor GPS" from the GPS menu. Nothing happens for awhile (it can take up to 15 minutes for the unit to find the satellites necessary to fix a position). I watch in geekish anticipation as it snags one sat, looses it, gains it back, finds another, and then another. When it's found four (it uses three to triangulate your position and one to determine altitude), the status fields for latitude, longitude, elevation, heading, atomic time, and speed begin displaying data: "Hey Sean, you're going 77.8 mph!" "You can see that on THERE," Sean says in amazement. "Yeah...now you're going 76.4...75.3." (Man, this could add a whole new dimension to backseat driving.) Clicking "Continue" on the GPS monitoring window takes me to the map. The Cherokee appears as a green arrow on the screen, moving up I-95 and leaving a trail of arrows in its wake. The long arrow chain looks like a dragon in a Chinese New Year parade as it snakes along the highway. As we travel off the screen, and the screen refreshes, the arrows start over again. We're excited about using the TripMate for navigating downtown NYC, but after about an hour of use, the PowerBook battery warning icon flashes. Oh well, so much for a new battery that claims 4-6 hours of power. Note to self: get a cigarette adapter pronto! The rest of the trip, whenever we use the TripMate, we can't help periodically exclaiming: "This thing is SO cool!" and "I can't believe it only costs $149."
 
DeLorme's TripMate is incredibly cool technology. It consists of a 12-channel GPS receiver bundled with Street Atlas, USA, mapping software that covers the entire United States. The GPS unit takes four AA batteries and has no on/off switch, no LED read-outs, and no buttons. It's completely dependent on your laptop for operation. As described above, it's completely simple to set up and use. The Mac version only lets you see where you're going, there's no point-to-point routing. As of the 5.0 Windows version, you not only get this extremely useful point-to-point feature, you get voice navigation as well. Street Atlas 5.0 also allows you to edit roads (one way, no left turn, etc.), get map updates online, view listings of radio stations in the areas you're traveling through and oodles of other cool features. Both Mac and Windows versions allow you to add markings and notes to your maps, search locations by zip code, latitude/longitude, placename and addresses. If you don't have a CD-ROM drive on your laptop, you can select the relevant map area on your desktop computer and download it to your laptop. If you don't have a laptop, but you do have a PalmPilot (and a desktop PC), you can still use TripMate. With a special optional adapter, you can hook the TripMate GPS to your Pilot and download your route to see directions, heading, speed, and elevation as you travel. Street Atlas also interfaces with DeLorme's Phone Search USA CD-ROM and shows you the location of the numbers you're calling, which sounds like a dream for sales 'droids and stalkers. The TripMate is not without its problems. It takes a long time to find its navigating satellites and sometimes doesn't find them at all. It worked great on the open road, but had trouble along streets through heavily wooded and downtown areas. We attempted to start tracking again when we entered New York City, but were never able to acquire more than two sats at a time. The TripMate box says you can "drive with confidence. TripMate will track your locations in cities, canyons, and heavily wooded areas." Given my experience with the unit, that seems a tremendous stretch. Maybe after spending more time with it I'll change my mind, but I don't think I'd stake my life on this gizmo. I also had a tough time with the Mac version crashing frequently (on both my PowerBook and desktop machine). The PC version of 5.0 they sent was damaged and couldn't be loaded onto my machine. The maps on the Street Atlas were sometimes outdated as we traveled down roads that didn't exist on the map (which is kinda fun, actually). If you need to rely on GPS navigation for your livelihood or safety, I would probably look into a more high-end system. But, if you're looking for a low-cost way of finding your way around and having a great deal of fun in the process, TripMate is a good choice. I still can't believe it's only $149. - Gareth Branwyn [11/20/97]
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