Yeah, yeah, sure: the Navman ICN 330 Portable Navigation System is super compact, so it’s easy to carry and mount in your car. And yes, the bright, 2.8-inch anti-glare screen is easy to see and read. And we admit that its 2gb SD card is pre-loaded with freshly-updated maps of our North American continent which include helpful points of interest like gas stations and airports.

OK, fine, it’s cool that it does 3D mapping, and its voice guidance feature is totally handy. And yeah, that you can select a male or female voice, that’s a nice bit of customizability. And we don’t dispute that its rechargeable battery makes it easy to use anywhere.

And yes, yes, it’s so simple to use that you can basically take it out of the box, turn it on and get started. But that brings us to what bugs us about the thing.

Look, you can put this thing in your car if you want, and it’ll provide helpful data like your ETA, distance-to-turn information and a real-time progress bar. It’s got Drive-Away and Back-on-Track features, and it can do postcode address searches. It can store your favorite destinations and give you multiple routing options. You know what? You can push a button and get your speed, current time, time-to-go and total distance. So go for it. And tell yourself all the while that you’re reading a sophisticated GPS navigation console. But that’s a euphemism, friend, and do you know what for?

It’s just fancy talk for getting directions, and that’s not how we roll.

We’ve got a long-established habit of not asking for directions, and we’re not going to break it now just because it’s a computer instead of a gas station attendant. We’re dead-reckoners. We navigate by an internal compass. When need be, we comb miles and miles of two-lane highway to find a turn that we could have sworn was right around here somewhere.

So you go ahead with your technological crutch. Go on and get to your appointments on time. Proceed not to waste gas driving in circles. But don’t expect us to join you. We’ve got our pride to maintain, thank you.

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