New toy!!!! car GPS

[jadziasman]

My wife just surprised me with one of the latest car GPS devices as an early Xmas present.

It's a Navigon 2100 she bought from Staples. I just started looking at it and wow it can do a lot. It has a touch screen and a pretty loud audio voice.

I'm going to take it with me on my trip to Chicago this Saturday.

Does anyone else have a car GPS???? If so, please share your experiences with it.

[csrmel]

i have a garmin streetpilot.
garmin are piece of crap company. their products are good but they charge like $125 each year for map updates. this should be FREE.

who the hell charges for software updates anymore? in any case i am thaknfull that people have ripped the update dvd's and put them online for download. im not giving garmin $125 each year.

other than that, its pretty sweet. mine does all the usual gps crap.i had it in my backpack and rode my friends hayabusa on the interstate. i clocked a real 173mph. since the gps shows maximum attained speed, i now have bragging rights that i am the fastest driver of HIS hayabusa. he wont even take it up to 173.

[Danronian]

My friend has a Garmin streetpilot also, with b&W display. It was a cheap one, but it works pretty good. Some new roads it doesn't find, some developments it doesn't know how to get through. It does get confused sometimes, but I didn't know that about the map updates. That's insane!

It keeps popping up on his to update the map, he thought it was going to be like $10 or something... He's not going to like that news at all.

[OdieTurbo]

I've got the Garmin iQue M5, a pocket PC and GPS all in one. Voice feedback, touch screen, and the MapSource software so I can plan trips out on the PC and download to the GPS. Added bonus is I can take the GPS anywhere and still use it

I do agree with csrmel though, damn updates are pricey!

[Rick Rae]

I got into it from the foot-powered side. Bought a Garmin Geko 301 (very small/simple/light B&W unit) for mountain hiking, and it eventually replaced the cyclometer on my bike, too. Knowing your altitude, heading, how many miles you've walked/biked, the security of a "bread crumb" track so you can find your way back even if you got off the trail or lost daylight... all of it is invaluable.

When I had to make a 1,000+ mile round-trip between Virginia and Connecticut, I decided a moving-map display would be useful. I got a Garmin GPSMap 60CS (later upgraded to 60CSX) because it's a good compromise between hiking/biking and car navigation. The screen's a little small for auto use and there's no voice prompt, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone interested primarily in road navigation. Even so, I basically never go anywhere without the thing anymore... it's just too darned useful. (One example: Need a Shell station? Bleep-blip-bloop, there's a list of the closest locations; pick one and bam, turn-by-turn directions! Easy as pie.)

My wife was always mildly curious about my GPSr though I think she saw it more as a "man toy" than anything. But after she got lost in New York (ouch!) she expressed a newly-found and sincere interest and wound up buying a TomTom. "Best money I ever spent" is how she rated it after owning it for a year.

I'd recommend one to anyone who does a fair amount of driving, if only for the convenience/security factor. For gas conservationists it's a great tool: Need to get to Sam's Club from "here?" No matter where "here" is, your GPSr will map out either the most direct or the fastest route. Tailor it to your driving style, too: At least with the Garmins, you can tell it how fast you drive the interstates, country roads, city streets; whether you want to avoid the interstates; what you're driving (lie and tell it you're on a motorcycle or bicycle and it'll give you different routes, some of which can be perfectly suited to low-speed P&G). And so on.

Every bit as indispensible as a ScanGauge, if you ask me.

Rick

[2TonJellyBean]

I wanna get one. Wasn't aware that they are part of the steady revenue stream game... $125.... ouch!

Anyone have a recommendation for a cheap but effective model? Might be fun and save some sanity on the drive to Florida over the holidays.