I got an HP rx5900 Travel Companion recently as an award for having a paper accepted at a conference. It’s by far the coolest toy I’ve gotten in a very long time, and that’s saying a lot because I’m a bit of a gadget geek. The HP rx5900 Travel Companion was featured on the OCC-HP Bike that I wrote about earlier. I have desperately wanted one of these since they came out because I need a GPS/moving map for all of my vehicles, my motorcycle, car, and airplane and it looks like this is going to work perfectly. It comes with the GPS and TomTom Navigator software built in and the amount of detail it provides for the roads is incredible. The mounting accessories and charging devices are very cleverly designed. All it needs for charging is a USB cable, so anywhere you have an USB socket, you can charge it up. Even the cigarette lighter and wall plug have a USB socket in them, and this is absolutely brilliant.

I had it up and running in no time, and found that not only is it a great navigation device, but it has a full PocketPC capabilities including the ability to sync with my PC so I can access my contact and task list as well as my schedule while I’m away from the PC. I can add changes and then re-sync with the PC when I return.

I was hoping that it would run aviation navigation software called Anywhere Map and so I visited the website and found that not only would it run the software, but the HP Travel Companion is a recommended system. I had tried using Anywhere Map previously, but found that a Blue Tooth GPS which was separate from the PDA was problematic in the aiplane because the PDA would periodically lose track of the GPS unit. It also meant more devices to charge and keep track of, so the built-in GPS is a welcome addition to this device. Best of all, when I get out of the plane and travel by car or motorcycle, I can just launch TomTom and have a world-class street navigation system. With TomTom, I can get maps for virtually anywhere I want to travel.

I am really looking forward to using this device and will report back more about it later after I’ve had a chance to give it a good workout on all my vehicles.