Nor would I want to spend several hundreds for a portable GPS device that I'd need to lug around every time I park my car.

And while some hand-held computers have GPS capabilities, not nearly as many people carry a PDA as the legions who've adopted cell phones as a daily appendage.

That's why the notion of adding GPS navigation to a cell phone, as Nextel has with a service called TeleNav, seems appealing.

And despite some annoyances, TeleNav performs the most essential task quite well at a fraction of the cost, reading step-by-step directions out loud.

Make no mistake. TeleNav is nowhere near as robust as a full-blown GPS system or a portable device. There are no maps. It's slower, and it only works where Nextel has network coverage. And if you miss a turn during a gap in cell coverage, TeleNav won't be able to deliver a quick fix until you get the signal back.

TeleNav's database of roadways sits on a network server rather than the device. So there's a lag, often about 10 seconds, as the phone beams your coordinates and destination to the network, then awaits a response from the server.

Now, if you spend most days making deliveries, visiting customers or driving passengers, you might consider the $999 TomTom Go, a feature-rich device that also attaches to the windshield.

The user-friendly TomTom can zoom in like a flight simulator to depict your real-time movement down a road or zoom out to show your progress on the overall route.

But for anyone who's not a professional road warrior, a full-blown GPS device seems like overkill.

TeleNav was perfectly adequate for steering through an unfamiliar neighborhood or the occasional road trip. It churns out clear directions by speakerphone and a simple screen display that shows the street you're on, distance to the next turn and a big arrow indicating which way to turn.

Nextel offers TeleNav on eight Motorola handsets with an embedded GPS receiver, all but one ranging in price from $80 to $200, and some non-GPS handsets which connect to a $70 GPS antenna. The mounting unit costs $13.

TeleNav users can sign up for a $10 plan designed to provide up to 10 sets of directions per month. For $20 a month, an "unlimited" plan provides between 30 and 100 routes.