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@Sharkstar
Power drain has been a big issue for GPS units - until recently, the idea of having a GPS that went more than a day on a battery charge was a bit of a joke. However, I was at a conference in Malta a couple of weeks ago and saw a presentation from the CEO of a company that seems to have solved this problem:
http://www.air-semi.com/
I quote:
*A GPS receiver built using Air’s GPS receiver technology need never be switched off. Always-On™ technology means that the power consumption when tracking the location of the device is around 2 orders of magnitude LOWER than conventional GPS solutions.
This has two important benefits:
CONTINUOUS LOCATION: For the first time, mobile, battery operated devices can be continuously aware of their location. In addition to supporting established applications such as navigation, this will stimulate a new generation of proactive location based applications and services which don’t need to wait for an input from the user.
INSTANT LOCATION: When first enabled, conventional GPS receivers can take many minutes to calculate their location (depending on signal conditions). An Always-On™ GPS receiver is continuously aware of its location – hence the location information is always instantly available on demand.
The availability of Instant and Continuous location information in all kinds of mobile, battery operated devices including cellphones, cameras, watches, games consoles (and many more …) will find an unimaginable number of uses beyond just navigation.*
They develop chipsets for OEMs - one big market for them is digital camera manufacturers, so that you can geotag every photo you take. They don't mention bikes here but it's an obvious extension.