Home health nurses getting lost. Looking for a GPS solution for a laptop computer

I am new to the whole GPS thing and need some advice. My company sends people and medical equipment to people's homes. Obviously, there are problems finding some addresses. I need to know what I can add to a laptop for navigation. I also need to be able to track routes taken, and time spent at a specific locations. Is there any way to see all of this real time, or is an end-of-day download more cost effective?

Thank you, Greg Stark

Greg, if you are searching for a GPS solution for a laptop computer, then you came to the right place. Welcome to the forums.

Navigation software has been reviewed here. Beside the software, you also need a laptop GPS receiver (about $50). Some such units come with a data logging capability (end-of-day download).

Thank you Marvin!

A friend suggested MS Trips and Maps ??? Would this product meet my needs. Does it provide the logging capability that you refered to? What other products would you reccomend that I research?

Sorry for all the newbie questions. I just need a starting point to research/compare potential products.

Thanks again Marvin for your quick reply.

Greg Stark

If your friend knows you and knows your needs and requirements, then I would say MS Streets & Trips is very likely the right product.

In short, Streets & Trips (sometimes referred to as Streets & Maps) can be used for GPS navigation, it does have very good route planning capability, it can record where you've traveled (it draws a narrow blue line on the map, if this feature is enabled, so you can see where you've been).

Streets & Trips can be purchased in a package with a USB GPS receiver.

Hi Greg,

There is an alternative to think about. If you were to pick up an inexpensive Garmin Nuvi it will create a track file as you travel. It can then be easily downloaded into your PC for analysis later.

If you turn on the GPS when you start out in the morning and clear the old track file so a new one starts clean, here's what you can expect to get from the track file at the end of the day.

You'll get an actual visual track displayed on the map of where you have traveled during the day. Inside the track file itself are a series of data points that include a bunch of stuff, but of interest to you is that each data point is date/time stamped. It shouldn't be difficult to quickly figure the time spent at each stop from these time stamps.

You would need a Garmin program called MapSource to do the download to the PC and track analysis, but we can help you get it installed for free (yes, it's even legal). It's not terribly difficult to export the track data to a spreadsheet to do further analysis if it turns out to be useful.

As Marvin mentioned, you can get a free 60 day trial of MS Streets&Trips. That will allow you to look at it on your PC, but without a GPS receiver for it you won't be able to get any idea of its navigation features. I've been using Garmin stuff for a long time and I'm a self-confessed Garmin bigot, but I genuinely find the navigation features of Streets&Trips to be rather a pain to use. Also, if you can't do what you want inside Streets&Trips, you cannot get any data out of it. It has no export features at all.

What I would suggest is to fire up your favorite search engine and see if anyone has created an application for the sort of things you want to do. I have to figure that someone has created that sort of thing for travelling salespeople. It almost seems a no-brainer that something like that already exists.

...ken...

Ken has the best idea.