Where You At?

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

Somewhere on the causeway between Miami Beach and the mainland, my brother-in-law said, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Vanilla cappuccino?" I whispered. "Yes," he said. "But where?" For reasons that are unclear to me, my bro-in-law and I share a powerful affinity for those hot, disgusting, highly caffeinated beverages you can buy only from vending machines at 7-Elevens. Finding a 7-Eleven in your own neighborhood isn't exactly rocket science. But we were vacationing on alien terrain. Where, oh where, was the closest source of the Treacle of Life?

Fortunately, we had an onboard navigation system, the Magellan 750NAV, in our Hertz rental car. While I drove, Danny punched in our coordinates. The NAV system computed the location of the closest 7-Eleven and--miraculously--displayed turn-by-turn driving instructions on a large, easy-to-read map while also reading them aloud.

It's only two months old, but, man, I already love the 21st century.

Naturally, the 750NAV was far from bug free. Sometimes it couldn't communicate with its global-positioning satellites; other times it did so imperfectly, locating us with pinpoint accuracy miles out at sea. I liken the experience to traveling with a really knowledgeable but hopelessly drunk guide.

So would I use it again? In a minute. As long as you know how to sober the thing up (turning it off and on often did the trick), the 750NAV is a real boon to tourism, giving directions, noting points of interest (restaurants, parks, hotels) and generally making life easier.

Global-positioning technology for pedestrians--as opposed to automobiles--is still in its infancy. But there are at least half a dozen pocket-size devices on the market designed to mimic the in-car experience. I've been fooling around with two: the eTrex Legend ($249, from Garmin), which fits in your pocket; and the Geode ($290, from Geodiscovery), which plugs into a Handspring Visor.

Both units did pretty well at picking up satellite signals, triangulating my position and noting it on a street map--as long as I was outdoors and had a clear view of the southern sky. But it's hard to recommend one device over the other. While the Legend has by far the superior size, shape and display, the clunkier, battery-sucking Geode has better databases and expandability. I suspect the Geode will be the first to tell me where I can find the nearest Fleet Bank (and save me the fee for using some other bank's ATM).

The Legend, which is supposed to start shipping to retail stores this week, weighs a mere 5.3 oz. and has an "electronic bread crumb" feature called TracBack, which lets you retrace your route to your starting point. But the Legend's tiny memory--8 MB--means that for a big city like New York, you can't fit much more than street-level maps. Those are fine for finding an address, but don't expect them to recommend a good Uzbeki barbecue joint. For that, the Geode showed more promise. You can add as much as 128 MB of memory, and there are deals in place to provide all kinds of "Geo-coded" software add-ons. For now, I'm holding out for one that can point me to the nearest vanilla cappy.

For more hands-on gadget reviews, visit onmagazine.com Questions for Josh? You can e-mail him at jquit@well.com