I’m thinking of getting a GPS, since the prices have finally come down to reasonable. But the ones that have built-in mapping are still pricey. So it seems like it would be useful to have a road atlas that was gridded using lat/long so that you could use your GPS to find the coords and the paper map to find out where that was, roundabouts.
Does this exist?
For the most part maps have lat and lon on them. However, unless you are getting a large scale map, ie not a state map, then just a regular GPS is not going to be a great help. You would be better off in the long run just reading the map. By the time you figured out where you were on the map, then looked back on the GPS you would have taken a lot more time then just reading the map normally.
I would say to look on eBay for an older streetpilot. I have one that’s black and white and works well that was cheap off of eBay. They are also now selling some Garmin units cheap, in the 200-400 range that did not sell well. I would say that in the long run you would be better off with one that has a base map.
What do you want to do? I use MS Streets and Trips (2001 and 2002 editions). That program can take an address and give you the waypoint which can be programed into the gps (several steps involved). It makes finding a place much easier even thought I usually am looking at a small b&w basic map (only major roads), w/ an arrow pointing to the location and the distance to it. A very primative setup but works very well.
What is needed (hear this Garmin) is a GPS that can take voice commands to input an address.