Caught mappin' with GPS

You probably have had a cellphone for 15 years and you're on your third-generation digital camera. There's a 46-inch LCD television in your family room and a laptop on every counter.

What's left?

Obviously, if you don't have a GPS navigation system for your vehicle, you're at risk of being branded old school -- one of those people who frequent gas stations for directions. After all, 10 million Americans can't be wrong, can they?

That's the estimate of how many people will buy Global Positioning System navigation devices this year, mostly for their vehicles (hikers also use them, among others). These systems capture timing signals from a network of 24 Defense Department satellites and can calculate your precise position on Earth.

The GPS navigation devices store electronic maps of every highway and street in North America and use the GPS signal to direct you to any address you want.

Though I should be a prime candidate for one of these devices, given my travel to new cities at least every month for my job, I don't have one.

Like a lot of others, I am obviously interested. I had a chance recently to test the NAV740, made by a unit of Ingram Micro, the electronics house based in Orange County. It doesn't have a well-known name, like Garmin or Magellan, but it's a new product loaded with features for a suggested price of $299.

Adam Diep, the Orange County engineer who designed this system, said it offers more features for less money than anything on the market.

As with almost every other GPS unit, the NAV740 allows you to program street addresses. It also contains a generous 11 million points of interest that you can quickly access, including franchise restaurants, hotels and sports venues. The NAV740 has a 4.3-inch, touch-sensitive color screen and a rechargeable battery that lasts about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours in normal use. Most of the time, I kept it plugged into my cigarette lighter.

It features voice-to-text prompts, meaning it not only gives you verbal instructions to turn right or left in so many feet but the street names you should be looking for. It does have an amusing tendency to mispronounce Spanish names, like too-junga for Tujunga Canyon Road.

Everybody I showed the device thought it was cool, useful and modern.

In my tests, I already knew where I was going, so I had to pretend I needed help from the NAV740. It generally was able to find good routes from work to home and even into some of the remote sections of the San Gabriel Mountains where I go on weekends.