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Fugative Jul 19th 2010 5:37 am

GPS in Saudi
 
Can anyone advise if GPS is worth buying in Jeddah?

Is it any good? Which one & where can I buy?

Any help please!:eek:

coffindodger Jul 19th 2010 11:00 am

Re: GPS in Saudi
 
I used t live in Taif before i came to Riyadh,
Yes i used my GPS in jeddah a lot in the early days.
Mine is a car type version the ole Garmin 715 model.
I have said before you do need to upgrade it every 2 years for the latest info on roads etc.
i bought mine in Al Jahir Book store on Sari St.

typical Jul 19th 2010 11:06 am

Re: GPS in Saudi
 
I use my Nokia's GPS all the damn time out here.

The biggest pain is translating hand-drawn, usually inaccurate maps into a destination for the GPS to follow. I find wikimapia is very helpful for searching for a building and getting GPS coordinates.

It doesn't help that most GPS maps have the official names and not the colloquial ones - I don't know if any brands of GPS can cope with this.

Fugative Jul 19th 2010 1:45 pm

Re: GPS in Saudi
 
Thanks guys!
Ive mastered the single roundabouts, but found a triple roundabout with 1 thrown in at the end today, do they help with that also, lol:ohmy:

norsk Jul 19th 2010 7:25 pm

Re: GPS in Saudi
 

Originally Posted by Fugative (Post 8712495)
Thanks guys!
Ive mastered the single roundabouts, but found a triple roundabout with 1 thrown in at the end today, do they help with that also, lol:ohmy:

gps can be a bit of a hit and miss in saudi. even if you have the newest maps they will still be out of date (roads change a lot here) and also as mentioned by another poster the street names (where they exist) are usually different from reality. i've got a garmin something or other with full gcc maps and my touareg has a built-in one (which is ridiculously out of date, but there is no way I'm spending SR10,000 as quoted to update it)..

there's a trick to roundabouts in saudi; don't slow down when approaching one, just keep going or the dude behind you will hit you from behind...used to scare me sh*tless when I first got here, but you get used to the insanity eventually..


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