Navigation Systems - gain or pain?

BRUTALITY FACTOR: Medium

Navigation systems have become so cheap nowadays, so almost every other person owns one. So I am one of the 'other person'. I pretty much go to the same places everyday so I didn't need one. I got it thinking it may come of use someday, if not me, at least someone else.

Well, the 'someday' did eventually come. For me. And, it looked like I had to press OK for a warning message that comes up every time I switched it on. That was just annoying. You see, human beings don't normally suffer from short term memory loss. Might be, the FDA was trying to be over cautious. It took forever to locate the satellite signal. I mean, if it wanted to know where it was. It could have asked me, instead of asking Mr Sputnik who is floating 1000's of miles away. Mr. Sputnik eventually got back to my navi. Finally, as I pressed the address button. The battery died.

My navi was now, close to being broken into pieces. I calmed down and connected it to the battery outlet with a mile long wire. Now my car looked like the inside of a desktop computer. Again, it wanted to know where it was. I punched in the address I wanted to go. After I typed the whole street name in the 2 inch screen. It displayed the first alphabet. It was that slow. The shortest route it showed seemed like it was recommended by a blind man. It told me to go around my block twice. 

The drive was OK as, upcoming turnings were shown and repeated till you memorized it. The lady seemed very angry if I didn't follow its directions. The navi is very useful during the nights when you want to know the name of the upcoming street. On my back home, I thought of exploring the place. But points of interest in the navi showed me gas stations.Come on. Why would a gas station, be an interesting place? It should show bowling alleys, clubs, bars etc.

The inbuilt navi's in cars cost at least $1500. But people don't hesitate to buy them. Some are so addicted to it, that they won't drive a car without one. The in built navi's acquire the GPS signal pretty quickly. The latest one's, are the navi's with voice recognition. Do not, for a second think that its convenient. Its not. Unless you are blood related to girl behind the screen, she cannot understand you.

In one car, this is what happened when I tried telling it where I wanted to go:

Ms Intelligent: City?

Me:                  Chicago.

Ms Intelligent: Could you please repeat that?

Me:                  Chicago.

Ms Intelligent: Could you please repeat that?

Me:                  Chicago

Ms Intelligent:  Texas. Is that correct? Yes or No?

Me:                   No.

Ms Intelligent:  Yes. Is that correct? Yes or No?

Me:                   No.

Ms Intelligent:  Please say street name.

Me:                  Shut up.

Ms Intelligent:  Could you please repeat that?

You see. Me with my confused accent can't make it understand at all. Above all. You need to yell it out loud since the car has a hearing problem. My co-passenger's ear drums almost burst in the process. I finally came to a conclusion that the google maps on my phone or, the map in my glove box is a much better option. Or just call my friend and let him voice guide me. At least he will understand my commands.

A navi is certainly a very useful device, but at this point it is just not usable. Probably Apple should launch one of these. Once they come out with one which will be usable, then others will follow suit. Till then the GPS will be short for "Great piece of shit".