Best software for both driving and backcountry hiking

[persona2020]

Need your advice.....

My dad is buying a laptop and wants it to be gps capable:

1. special requirements for the laptop?
2. what software would be the best for both driving and backcountry hiking?

He would switch from the laptop to a handheld when hiking would the software be able to go on both machines?

Thank you so much.

[neil01]

I would be very suprised if you found anything to meet your requirements. While some systems claim to have a 'walking' mode, in my experience, even the best of these just keep you off the motorways, and don't worry about one-way restrictions etc.

Often minor waterways are ommitted (ones which can be impassable to a walker).

Unfortunately, you have two quite different requirements, one where only relevant detail needs to be shown (as more than this would only confuse) and another where detail is King.

However, if you are happy just to use a satnav to show your current location, and to use this information in conjunction with an appropriate printed map, there should be several options open to you. However, my gut feeling is that you would be better off looking for individual solutions.

[mikealder]

To switch between in car and walking is a difficult one to fulfill with a single solution, there are devices such as the Road Angel 7000 that will do this but I would never recommend one having used this device, off road it is just about OK, but on road navigation is very poor.

To be honest I would look towards a PDA based solution running a Topo mapping package for walking such as Memory map, and also a car based navigation package for on road usage, TomTom, Route 66 and Co-Pilot Live 7 are all credible applications that can be employed for this.

Why do you want/ need a laptop as these are not ideal in either situation, assuming you have a PC at home that is all that is required to install software and maps/ routes etc to the PDA. Go for a PDA with inbuilt GPS, this means less kit to carry around, even consider some pocket PC based phones for the job, they are available with built in GPS and work very well.

One word of warning though, a PDA is vulnerable when out walking if you drop it it won't fair too well, if it rains it is best kept out of harms way so consider putting it in an Otter Box which offers serious protection and is waterproof - food for thought, if you need any additional information or links to the suppliers of this type of software/ hardware please ask - Mike

[akribie]

The same computer with a GPS receiver should be capable of running both a driving program and a raster-map program using the same hardware. Use one program for driving and the other for walking using the same hardware.

[tomthompson]

I dont think I would like to go hiking with a laptop
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