OneAndOneIs2

So I'm just days away from finally getting all my affairs in order and leaving the country to go for a wander around the world.

But there were a few things I wanted.

I wanted some way of getting online occasionally - to stay in touch with people, maybe to look up nearby tourist attractions, that kind of thing.

I wanted some kind of e-map thing. And ideally, I would have liked GPS.

So I was quite tempted by the iPhone. Google maps, wifi and through-the-network internet, the Safari browser...

All good. But the phone part would be unreliable and expensive abroad. So.. what about the iPod Touch? The iPhone without the phone.

Still £200.. and tho it's aces at the wifi and the browser.. it can't do much else and it relies heavily on wifi spots.

So I wasn't sure. So I got in touch with one of the few people I know that's at least as big a gadget freak as me, and I dragged her to Brighton to look into it.

We looked. It's cool. Shiny. Lovely screen. Really easy to use the browser with the virtual keyboard and multi-touch zooming.

But still.. only works in wifi areas. Costs £200.

And then she came up with another alternative. Buy a Palm, because they have Wifi and can do GPS.

I'd never thought of that. My last Palm was a M505 had no wifi or bluetooth or anything, it hadn't occurred to me that Palms did that kind of thing nowadays.

But they do.

So I came home and hit Ebay. £130 for a Tungsten TX. £25 for a GPS receiver. A full-size fold-up keyboard and a case for the Palm whilst I was at it.

The Palm arrived the other day. The GPS arrived this morning. I installed the software, struggled with the Bluetooth for a while, and suddenly it all came together and told me my location.

It knew where I was!

Then I finally got the maps installed, and suddenly it knew what that location MEANT. It showed my road. And what direction I was facing.

Superb!

So when I'm wandering around Europe, my Palm will be able to tell me where I am and how to get where I'm going. When there's Wifi, it'll get me online. And it'll even make it easy to write blog posts through a proper keyboard.

And all for less than the cost of Apple's iTouch. Says a lot for the merits of Apple's pricing vs. ebay's.

On the downside, it doesn't look quite so pretty. But you know, I can live with that :o)

Apart from anything else, I'm still not all that confident at my ability to find my parent's place in France without guidance...