Mom had an old magellan. I liked it. It still works although I get a warning
that the maps are out of date. She upgraded to one of the Nuvis. I forgot
which one. On main roads, both have no issues. Get off the beaten path
outside of the city and strange things occur. The re-routing takes some
getting used to. Gives a whole new meaning to Bitchin' Betty. The routes
that it takes also seems strange at times. A friend has a Tom Tom and
claims no issues either. I think you'll find that the Garmins are quite
intuitive in operation. It is the same way with aircraft avionics too where
they seem to be taking the market share. As previously mentioned,
getting a fix can take a long time. One of the units has the new chipsets
and it still takes a while. Warm starts of course are much better. You
learn to turn on the unit before you get going and it will be ready when
you get in the car.
On all of the stand alone units, I have yet to find one that has the detail
that my old Streets and Trips maps had, even in 2D mode. Because of
that, I'm currently using my WinMobile phone with both Google Maps
and Bing. Both work quite well and provides the detail I need, although
it is a bit tiny on the little screen. I had Yahoo Go V3 for a while, but it
crashed too often and I got sick of their tech support telling me it was
my phone. I just got an email saying they are cancelling it. Go! was also
quite slow in comparison to Google or Bing. Google maps mobile does
things right all the time in my experience. Bing has some quirks. One of
the most annoying is that when you enable the GPS, it zooms in really
tight and you have to zoom back out. You cannot move the map around
if the GPS is active, otherwise it zooms right back to where you were. You
can move around with Google maps mobile. Need to go back? Press the
locate button that is right there on the screen and it goes back to the
GPS location.
I'm positive my cell carrier hates my unlimited net sub at $30/month, but
I've used the phone all over the US with no issues as long as there is cell
coverage. I don't think you can go wrong with any of them.
Brian
battmain@yahoo.com
________________________________
From: Steve Hammatt Mount Vernon WA USA <gsteve@hammatt.com>
To: Shop Talk <shop-talk@autox.team.net>
Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 1:50:29 PM
Subject: [Shop-talk] GPS Systems
Looking for recommendations for a portable GPS system for our cars. Needs to
be portable and self-powered because we'd probably use it during our antique
car tours as well as with our daily drivers.
Any direct experience regarding brands (Garmin, Magellan, TomTom, etc.) and
desired features? Christmas time is drawing near<grin>
Thanks
Steve Hammatt
Mount Vernon WA USA
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