Traveling to Port Broughton and Moonta with the aid of a NavMan was something of a new experience for me. My partner, Enigma, was doing the driving so I had plenty of time to observe this little technological marvel from the passenger seat.If you're like me, able to get yourself from A to B (most of the time) using old fashioned maps and street directories, then you might appreciate the following explanation; A NavMan or, I presume, Navigational Manager, is a little electronic device with an LCD display that attaches to the windscreen (usually) of your car and tells you how to get where you're going through the use of real time animated maps, voice instructions and GPS (global positioning system) data. (See my photo above).
Before this invention the term Navigational Manager and Passenger were interchangeable as many of us drivers relied on our memory and the map reading skills (or lack there of) of our passengers to direct us to where we were going.
A NavMan completely eliminates the need to even read a map. Simply enter the data of where your trip starts and where you want to go and let your NavMan direct you, as you're driving, with a smug, yet still, somehow, emotionless voice of a person who knows better than you. It'll tell you where to go.
I learnt that you shouldn't argue with a NavMan and that NavMans should have an I told you so mode because, if anyone is going to make a mistake in getting there, it'll be you. The Human Error in the system.
For example, on our way to the Cornish Festival in the town of Moonta, we passed through the town of Kadina. For some strange reason NavMan directed us through the town on one side of the town centre, on some big back street loop, that took several minutes, and got us to a point at the other end of the town centre that both Enigma and I could clearly see we could have got to in seconds simply by driving through the town centre its self. Both of us thought the NavMan was just being stupid.
On the way home we passed back through Kadina and this time the NavMan directed us straight through the town centre where we discovered the main street was two lanes of one way traffic only. It was at this point I concluded the NavMan needed an I told you so mode.
Don't argue with the NavMan - it knows what it's doing. Even if you think it doesn't it'll still, politely, tell you where to go!
The S200 is like the top-of-the-range S300t, except that it misses out on a built-in traffic messaging receiver. This means its feature list includes an FM transmitter, MP3 and video playback, 3D landmarks, extended lane info and an iPhone-style interface.
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