Are you planning to buy a portable GPS during the holidays?

I find it a challange to use my natural instincts of a wonderful sense of direction (falling back on the compass in the car once in a while) and using a printed map. Since I could read, I would entertain myself on long trips, reading a map and tracing our route and getting "the big picture" of where we were. At age 62, we need all the brain excercise we can get!

Bought a Tom Tom 910 a year ago to use on trips to Europe. Works very well in Germany & France. Did fairly well in Portugal. Did not know it's way around in very small cities. Was really impressed with performance in old East Germany which is not well sign posted. Maps not up to date are a problem in some areas. They should supply updates at a nominal charge instead of having to buy complete new maps.

After researching, I Picked up a Garmin 350. Ordered additional mount for my other car.
This unit does all that you want. Good quality, best chipset, good TTS, and easy to use. What more could you want?
Hook on now, your missing the fun! Save some fuel too.

I have no real need for a GPS at this time. I have one that I take out on my boat and my ride has one built in. I actually use the one on my boat more often when keeping track of my fishing spots on Lake Erie. It helps in bad weather on the lake as well.

I have two Garmins and am very pleased with both. The one I use the most is a Street Pilot 7200. I love the 7" screen on the 7200 because of the ease of seeing the map while traveling. The other data displayed is also very useful such as time of arrival, time lapsed, etc. My other unit is a eTrex Vista. Again, I'm very satisfied with it. I haven't used it an awful lot but when I did it performed very well.

I got mine pre-installed in my used PT Cruiser. It works well, but its still a good idea to have some idea of where you are going before setting out on the road.

This is cool, I've just recieved your e-mail and had yesterday bought a Sat-Nav. I'm a Agency trucker in the UK and I travel to work by Pushbike. Being in an Agency I never know where I'm going to be driving to until I get to work. This means carrying an aweful lot of maps! Being in London, typically it's surrounded by many different counties, which in turn means carrying many maps and the weight is unbearable. Having to deliver parcels yesterday, I got stuck with 30 to 40 deliveries all thrown in the wagon in no particular order. Stress can be an understatement (but that does'nt help getting stressed). Delivering poorly yesterday and had just been paid holiday money from the last placed I worked, I put aside my Enviro-way of thinking and bought one and wow! I even offered the boss I'd come into work for free today to make up for the poor performance of the past week. Yes it's that good. I bought a Tom Tom- One XL T, and paid full whack at

I have a Garmin Nuvi 350. It is the best thing I have bought since I don't know when. I use it alot for finding places I have never been before especially at night and to find the shortcuts that I don't know about. It also gives you phone numbers to restaurants and take out places. I can phone my order in and then pick it up within minutes. I just bought my daughter a unit (Garmin 340)for Christmas. The only thing that I must have on the unit is that it tells me the name of the street to turn on. So that's why the holiday sales are selling units so cheap. They don't have the features needed for everyday use.

Never needed one before don't need one now.

Over 2 years ago I purchased a Garmin StreetPilot 2620. Its retail price was just over $1400 but since this electronics store was closing I got it for approximately $760. The real reason I bought it was that I am in real estate and sometimes have a difficult time finding the properties and it was a tax deduction for me. Of course, even with rural properties it doesn't always find them but then again many rural properties can't be found due to lack of addressing system and lack of street signs. It can be mounted in the car or it has a holder which is similar to a bean bag that holds it securely. Has an adapter for indoor use and a cord to connect to computer to get any upgrades. You can select if you want to take the faster route or the shorter. There is a touch screen to type in data, and panning and enlarging the map. It will give you the distance between 2 points. You can store addresses as "waypoints" which is handy for addresses you frequent often from different areas. Has the night time screen. It also has a menu where you can find different points of interest, locations by intersections as well, also places that you are looking for by category (lodging, food and drink, government, and other services) or you can limit it using the name of the business. I am very pleased with this unit. The only thing, and I am sure it would happen with any GPS, is that if you are in a congested downtown area with very tall buildings they tend to block the signals. The map which is on the screen shows airports, lakes, rivers, cities, highways, interstates with exit information and secondary roads in metro areas. Also has a remote control and volume adjustment for speaker. Mine did malfunction but Garmin exchanged it for me without any problems. I am completely satisfied with my purchase but if I didn't need it for business I would never have bought it and would just reply on maps from Yahoo etc, whch are FREE.
TIP: If you can't find it on Yahoo your chances of finding it on a GPS are about zero.

I own an Initial Model GM-510. I use it for my vehicle transport business and it works fine. I bought it on GVC for about $300. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but it gives pretty good directions. I have been from California to Delaware, and it got me to where I needed to go. However, there are areas along the way where triangulation of the GPS satellite signals are impeded resulting in some pretty wacky directions like "make a u-turn" when I am in the mountains of California, in corn fields of the Illinois plains, or urban centers of Georgia. One time, in California, it took me miles past the address where I needed to stop. I will likely replace this unit next year, but I don't feel the more expensive units will do the job any better.

I have this thing called a map, i also have a compass. Why do I need to spend a fortune on a piece of equipment that will be outdated the day before I buy it.
Maps have been around for 600 years! How about GPS?

I really am the kind of person who needs this device, but am sort of behind in technology right now. I did read many of the posts for the question of the week re GPS devices and what's the difference. Thanks! Now I might have enough info to actually go out and buy one.

I already own two GPSs - one is a Lowrance iWay 500C and the other a small Magellan hand-held. I've owned the Lowrance iWay 500C for over a year now and love it. I looked high and low for one with a GPS screen that was large enough to be seen while mounted on the windshield or dash - most were just too small. The iWay 500C has a 5" screen. The iWay 500C has since been replaced with the iWay 600C with a 5" screen, 640H x 480V resolution, and a 30 GB hard drive. It has everything I could need in a GPS and is built like a tank. It is also reasonably priced at $549. RAM Mounts makes a very good on-dash mounting, better than a suction cup on the windshield mounting.

The Magellan pocket portable is battery powered and ideal for use when hiking.

I purchased a Garman 650, or was it 660 for about $440 on the net. It has all the features I need, including a large screen and faster processor.

They're much too expensive when I can just access mapquest on my cellphone. Don't need it yet.

I initially poo-pooed the necessity of having a GPS device, until about a year ago, that is, when I bought a viaMichelin X930. It's a pretty rudimentary device, and some of its features are clumsily implemented, but it does a good job nonetheless. I find it really comes in handy when driving on roads I've been on before but with which I'm not really that familiar, especially at night, without visual landmarks. The display shows every curve and side street, and, of course, alerts me to the turns I need to make. My wife, who heretofore was deathly afraid of traveling to unknown areas by herself, now uses it more than I do. It's given both of us a new sense of freedom, since she can visit her friends who live out of the area, and I don't have to drive her there.

I have a several year old Magellan Roadmate 700, upgraded to 1 760. It works well for me, and takes a lot of stress out of driving to new locations, particularly of the urban variety.

I'm guessing in the next two years we will see a real improvement in the delivery of traffic information. That's when I'll spring for a new unit.

I Microsoft's "Streets and Trips".
I like it better than the other systems I have used.
It has Microsoft's Windows normal Drop down menus and user friendly threads all through the program. For instance if I need make a change to my trip to include a small detour all is high light the route by clicking on the line, then drag and drop the line to include the new route a the annoying "OFF ROUTE!" messages go away. Like any software there are few weird quirks in "Streets and Trips", if you ignore the "OFF ROUTE!" messages for too long the computer becomes sluggish and may even lock up all together. Being that "Streets and Trips" is on my laptop the maps are much easier to read, they are all there with me, and if there was something along your route of interest you might actually notice it on the map before you drive past it. Easy to use means a great deal I am trying verbally tell my co-pilot how to use the software. Best of all it is not expensive. The starter set (software and receiver) is about $125, and annual software upgrades are only $40 to $50 dollars. Chrysler charges 10 times that for their software upgrade CD's.

I have had one for about three years now. As I travel a bit for work, I use it primarily to have an idea of time and distance more than directions. I find the directions sometimes confusing, as it always wants to send me down either the most direct route (which often will involve 20 mph downtown areas of really small towns) or it will send me out of my way on "major arteries".

If I am using interstates, it gives me a good exit, more often than not and major intersections. But for exact directions, it has no idea what lies in the way.

It has been valuable, however, to help me keep a schedule. I am in sales and service, so if I am going to be late, I know it and can call ahead to warn clients. They appreciate the heads up, rather than wondering where I might be.

I purchased a Lawrance i500WAYc in February '07. It came with 1.7 firmware, which was out of date. I down loaded 1.8 version and installed from their website. The 600iWay was on the market, but I was not aware of this as I would have bought that system instead. I have used this device to find addresses in my own hometown that I could not find otherwise. It is great for giving road twists and turns not otherwise obvious to a driver. It tells you what your next turn is going to be long before you have to execute (chance to get in the proper lane). Always tells you the distance and time to go (based on your current speed). My wife absolutely loves this unit as it gives her reassurance that she is on the right course. This unit has many features not appreciated by me (MP3 player). Our car has XM radio and a Bose sound system, CD player, DVD player and all the basic radio features. This added feature has no valaue to us.

In the long run, I consider this unit to be a valuable tool. I selected this unit because of it's screen size.
Art Bietsch

I purchased a Magellen Roadmate 2000T and had trouble from the GPS, but most especially from Magellen Customer/Technical Support, which is neither.

I now have a Garmin Nuvi 350 and love it. I travel 40,000 miles per year and this little thing has found many shortcuts that I never knew about. Just last week it detour routed me around an accident and saved me 30 to 40 minutes of gridlock.

Yes, I can read a map, but many roads either aren't shown on a map, or don't give you mileage. I have used Google Maps, Map Quest, Maps on Us and MSN maps. Most give you a slightly different route, or a completely different route with drives times all over the place. Why spend hours figuring which is the best route when all you have to do is punch in the address and go. And, when you are in a city with an accident grid lock, how many maps have city streets in enough detail to find your way out.

I'lk take my GPS any day over a paper map that tears right where you need to go. And how many of you are unfolding and reading a map or figuring which way is north on your Google sheet while driving?

Because i don't have money....

Have MS-Streets and Trips 2007 W/GPS for my laptop. love it! It is very accurate, and also has alot of features.

Besides mapquest or paper maps, you can use vznavigator at $3 per day on those occasions you really need a gps.

No, my next car hopefully will have one in it. However, I AM thinking about getting a Verizon cellphone with navigator service on it until then.

After using a Sony Nav-U GPS for the last year, I decided to upgrade.
After much research, I settled on the Navigon 2100, which I picked up on eBay for inder $200 including the lifetime traffic alerts (which was a big factor). It probably will take you a week to get acclimatized, as there are many features. I find that it is very fast in detecting route changes (i.e.) I want to go my way, instead of its way. The text to speech is excellent except that the voice quality could be a bit better. I find that it takes 5-6 minutes for the traffic info to lock in (be aware that it uses the DC power cable as an FM antenna.) I didn't really need an MP3 player, or bluetooth as I was mainly interested in its navigational quality.
Having it announce the exact street names is wonderful. I found that with the Sony GPS I would sometimes make a wrong turn if their were two intersections close together. I won't go into the minor details like its logging capability, POIs, ease of favorites entry, but its Reality View feature, where you see actual (virtual) overhead signage on parkways is a great help in keeping you on the right path.
The unit is unbelievably thin and lightweight, and about the only negatives I've found so far are the USB socket on the bottom forces you to mount the unit higher on the windshield... they should either relocate it to the side, or do like Sony did and make the mounting bracket a "docking station." The other minor annoyance (aside from the voice characteristics) is the only LED does not light in standby.
They should use a tr-color LED to show On-Standby-Charge.
Updates are done using the side-mounted SD card.

Dave

MY GPS is a Garmin 2610 and is about 5 years old. Still using original map set (declined offer 2 years ago to update maps for $150). It has proven to be very useful -though we do not use it a whole lot. Mainly for vacations (and interesting side trips with no worry of getting "lost") and sometimes finding restaurants, etc. Only problem we've had developed when we took it to Florida last May. It got "baked" in the car and now, when it get hot from sitting on dashboard, sometime it all but stops to function. We will then move it off the dashboard to let it cool down.

There has been very little problem with using the old map set. I guess where we go there have not been that many (or major) changes to the routes.