I have had this new toy—the GPS Companion—for several months, a birthday gift from my wife and daughter, but am just now getting around to writing a review on it for the newsletter.

As pictured on this page, this device is a 12 channel global positioning receiver that attaches to the Handspring Visor’s Springboard expansion port. Two pieces of software come with the unit: Map Companion and GPS Companion. They are installed from the Map Companion CD, which also contains maps of the entire United States. These maps are broken down by county within each state and then further broken down by individual municipality within each county. I think there are more than 20,000 such county and city files.

For example, to cover all of Hillsborough County, FL, you will need to load into your Visor the Hillsborough County map, the Tampa map and the Temple Terrace map. The amount of memory your Visor has will determine how many maps can be loaded.

I have one of the early Visors with only 2 MB of memory. I have added an 8 MB Springboard memory expansion module but have found out that—although it is a great place to store files and programs—many programs cannot be run from there and data stored there cannot be accessed if that data must also be written to. Plus, obviously the 8 MB memory expansion module cannot be attached to the Visor at the same time the GPS Companion is attached. Thus, I am limited to 2 MB for my maps and any other Visor programs that I want to be loaded.

My solution is to load all the maps I might need—a few at a time—and then move them to the expansion module along with programs that I also won’t be using at the moment.

For example, I might leave only Hillsborough and Polk Counties in Florida, along with municipalities Tampa and Temple Terrace, in the main memory but have Pinellas, Highlands, Pasco and several other counties, along with their separate municipalities like St. Petersburg, all loaded into the expansion module. That way I would have all of Hillsborough covered, also Polk except for its municipalities. Of course, if you have a newer Visor with a much larger memory, that is even better.

So, how well does this GPS work? When you attach it to the Visor, the Visor turns on and the GPS Companion program starts. However, you must still start the GPS. It can take anywhere from less than one minute to almost 10 minutes for it to get a fix. However, it usually does it on the quicker end of the time scale. With the GPS Companion program you are given your heading, speed, longitude, latitude and elevation. If you switch to the Map Companion, you see your position on the map, which you can zoom in and out. And, as you change locations, the map scrolls.

It would be nice if the two programs were combined, where you didn’t need to switch back and forth. And it would be nice if there were a map that showed the counties of each state. I know the positions of many of the Florida counties, since I have lived with them for many years. But on a recent trip to New York, I flew to New York City, spent a few days and then rented a car to travel to the country. I figured out I needed Westchester County, since I knew it was to the north, but what about other counties? I didn’t know the names of them. Then while driving through Westchester, I came to Sleepy Hollow and my map disappeared since I hadn’t included the city of Sleepy Hollow. There are 29 separate municipality maps you need to include with the Westchester County map.

So I have concluded that while quite good when you are walking or when you are driving around a city like Tampa, the GPS Companion leaves a bit to be desired when used in a car on a trip spanning more than one county. For that I will have to rely on Street Atlas USA on my laptop and the GPS unit that came with that program. However, it is certainly not as compact a package as the little Visor device.

I should note that on the plane trip, I sat by a window and tried to get the GPS unit to fix, but it didn’t. I have read of others having no problem getting a fix with the same unit on their plane trips. It does, however, work well for me in an automobile.

If you are familiar with a city, then the GPS isn’t of much use, since you can often walk a block and see a street sign and also look at the skyline to see where you are. But it would come in handy in a strange location. I certainly could have used it when I got turned around in the outskirts of Sleepy Hollow, but unfortunately I hadn’t loaded that map.

The GPS Companion uses two AAA batteries which are supposed to last about 10 hours. But note that while the GPS unit is attached, the Visor remains on—and that also runs down the Visor’s batteries. So take a lot of batteries on your trip. The unit costs around $150. u