As millions of wives and girlfriends will tell you, men seem to be genetically incapable of doing two things: putting their dirty socks in the hamper and asking for directions. While the electronics industry has, sadly, yet to come up with a sock-guzzling hamper, the other problem has been bravely addressed by manufacturers like Kenwood and Fujitsu Ten. Drivers can now tell a computer where they want to go, and the darn thing actually gives them directions over the car's speakers. No more being lost and red-faced at the mercy of strangers.
I drove around for two months with Fujitsu's Eclipse 9001 VAAN system (that's Voice-Activated Audio Navigation to you) installed in my car (thank you, Cartunes II in Middletown, Connecticut). The system consists of a plain, black metal box that goes under the front seat; a microphone mounted to the rear-view mirror or sun visor; and Eclipse's radio/CD player (touted as a high-quality unit, although mine refused to read the last three or four songs on many CDs).
To start the fun, you feed the player one of four supplied CD-ROMs (each covers different regions of the US), and a voice asks you, "Do you want to navigate?" From there on, you can pretend to be Dave Bowman, the astronaut in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - except that VAAN, unlike the mutinous HAL, won't give you any lip. You tell it where you are and where you want to go; it maps out the best route and stores it in memory. Now eject the CD-ROM and put on some bitchin' Mantovani. VAAN wakes up whenever you bark "Navigator," then gives you bite-size directions before discreetly nodding off again. Every time you've completed VAAN's previous instruction, simply say "Next" to proceed.
The good news is that it works. The bad news is that it often doesn't work very well. The computer talks to you in English, but it doesn't understand more than a few choice words: you have to slowly spell out street names and numbers character by character. Even then, it frequently mishears what you're saying. For short city trips, the procedure is often too time-consuming and not worth the bother - a plain old map will do. For longer excursions, though, VAAN could come in very handy, provided you don't go from one region you've paid for to another you haven't. You see, Fujitsu has divided the country into more than 20 metropolitan regions, with more to follow. Unlocking those regions means buying codes for about US$80 each.
Although its technology and interface need work, Fujitsu's technotoy is still ahead of the curve.
Eclipse 9001 VAAN: US$649.99; works only with Eclipse ECD-416 CD player, $789.99. Fujitsu Ten: (800) 233 2216, fax +1 (310) 476 4375.
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