What we have is basically a David and Goliath sort of thing. Goliath, in this case, is Garmin International which sells no less than 28 model variants of its Nuvi-series GPS street navigators. The Davids-two of them, actually-are Control Vision and Bendix/King, who have just introduced GPS navigators that combine both aviation and street navigation functions.

Are buyers really interested in these two capabilities in the same device? Evidently they are, given the number of requests weve received for a hurry-up look at these products. We examined the Bendix/King AV8OR Handheld in the September 2008

issue and for this report, we’ll look at Control Visions Anywhere Travel Companion, with a sideways glance at Garmins established GPSmap 396/495/496.

HP On the Case

Control Vision unveiled the ATC earlier this year and generated some buzz at Sun n Fun and Oshkosh. This product is less interesting for what it is than what it is not: a PDA or computer. Even though its software architecture is Windows CE, the ATC is a purpose-made navigational platform based on HPs iPAQ 310, which appeared two years ago to make a run at the portable ground navigation market dominated by Garmin.

The ATC is a turnkey version of the 310 loaded with Anywhere Maps aviation navigation software and HPs standard ground nav package. Wisely, Control Vision has made the ATC weather capable through a Bluetooth XM receiver and, as seems to be the fashion these days, it sports an MP3 and video player and will do Bluetooth interface with a headset to control a cellphone. (It doesnt contain a phone, however.) With a dual function XM receiver, the ATC will also tune XM audio programming. At $695 for the basics-aviation and ground nav software but not the weather box-the ATC is an impressive value.

So how we’ll does it work and is it easy to use? The ATC has a couple of limitations. First, processing horsepower. It has a 600MHz ARM-type processor with 128MB of