Laptop GPS World

I'm running Win98SE and would like to use it with a receiver (basic-few years old) to navigate in my car. What software would be easiest and compatable with my old thinkpad.

How old? How much memory? How much drive space? What CPU?

1993-4 laptop, 80M mem, 1.7 Gig free space, intel pentium. Is there a basic gps program that will allow me to use this dinosaur for trips around the country? Thanks for all of your suggestions.

Honestly, with a GPS receiver running, you're probably out of luck. Maybe loading the map program itself would be possible, but not for live GPS routing.

Thank you, Malaki. Is there a program/map that you would suggest using/download?

I'd say either Microsoft Streets & Trips or Delorme Street Atlas. They're the lowest cost, but are great programs.

Keep this in mind: both are going to need a DVD drive.

Ok. Looks like an upgrade on the pc is in order. Thanks, Malaki.

If you're not needing anything "incredible", check Wal-Mart. You can get fairly cheap laptops there.

My first though was to suggest to look at eBay for a few years old version of iGuidance (version 1.1), as I thought that iGuidance could provide you with very good first experience with GPS navigation on your laptop, but even those system requirements are not quite what you have:

· Microsoft Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP based computer
· Pentium II 233Mhz or higher microprocessor
· 64 MB RAM
· 200 MB available hard drive space

Your laptop, I believe came with 166 MHz processor - which perhaps could do, but there is no guarantee that it will, because it's a bit less than the stated requirement.

But really the best thing to do is to look around for a new laptop. They indeed are much more affordable nowadays, then they ever were in the past.

Thank you, Marv. I wasn't sure if this dinosaur was able to perform simple gps coordinates but I feel less confident now that it will. It was worth a try to use it.
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

As malaki86 said, the laptop could very likely handle a mapping program (with GPS turned off), but it would struggle if you attempted to use GPS functions .

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Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

My desktop is a pretty good system. Even so, it takes forever for either Streets&Trips or Street Atlas to load. I can't imagine how long it would take either of those to load on that Thinkpad!!

...ken...

The first computer I tried to run a GPS app on was an old Thinkpad. For the mapping itself, it wasn't toooooo horrible. But when I tried to use the GPS - WAY different story. Within about 10 miles on the interstate, it showed me about 9 miles behind.

Ken, I don't know what you consider a "pretty good system", and what you consider "forever." On a reasonably modern desktop (one worth about US $250 these days), S&T should not take longer than 10 seconds to start up. Not super-snappy, but reasonable considering it's got to load the map index on startup. My accounting program takes longer to start up than Streets & Trips.

If it's taking much longer than that, you probably need either (1) to get rid of craplets running in the background (2) more memory. Most people buy too much CPU and not enough memory.

Hi Tao,

I'm running XP/SP2 on a 2.6GHz Intel P4 processor on an Intel mainboard, 2GB of RAM and a 7200rpm SATA hard drive. I keep the hard drive defragged regularly and I regularly run a registry cleaner, malware cleanup and clean out garbage files (at least once or twice a week). I've been a computer professional for over thirty years. I've been personally playing with, and professionally supporting, personal computers since the late 70's. I build my own computers and make an effort to build balanced systems. Then I take the trouble to maintain their performance. Shucks, I even do regular backups.

I'm not sure what you mean by "craplets". I don't think I have many, but if you describe I could answer better. For what it's worth, I use Startup Manager to keep the startup stuff to the necessary minimum.

It takes Quicken, with a database going back to 1988, less time to load than either S&T 2008 or SA 2008. It takes them both a good solid twenty seconds or more before the map screen displays.

You know that the S&T programmers expect it to take awhile to load when they take the trouble to have a "Startup Status:" box that lists all the things it's doing as it's starting up. They usually only do that if it's going to take so long to start that if they didn't report that something was going on the user would think it was hung and start phoning tech support.

...ken...