Navigations systems

[wmccall]

Its important I know exectly how much longer it is to get back to my hot tub.  Do any of you own Navigation systems for your car, other than factory OEM units?

[Webini]

Sure do, a Garmin C330.  Love it.  We move it between cars all the time.  It has been great for vacations, going to my son's away basketball games, etc.  My son is a new driver so it has helped him out a lot.

Garmin and Tom Tom are the two top brands.

[countryboy]

Tom Tom one here

[wmccall]

Do they come with golf courses loaded, or is that something that you add later?

[Bonibelle]

I asked this same question a while back and after lots of research, we finally settled on a Tom Tom. Since the kids decided they liked the English female voice though, we call it Tam Tam...We love it and my husband takes it everywhere he goes. It does get a bit weird though when you start talking back to it  ..  We picked it up on a special sale at Best Buy for $199.00..I have never seen it that cleap anywhere again...

[Vinny]

I have a Mio C220 and it's nice. It's not fancy and it doesn't have traffic alert (extra fee for this service anyway) and it doesn't say street names - I have found computer generated names don't sound right at times. It has about 3 million points of interest with phone numbers. I will check on golf courses.

I picked the unit up for about $150,  5 months ago.  I sometimes can lock onto satillites inside the house. I recently went on a business trip and went through tunnels and it locked onto satillites within 20 - 30 seconds after the tunnel ... someone with a Garmin complained that they had problems locking onto satillites after coming out of these tunnels.

Like everything else, everyone has their favorites!

[Bill75]

I have a Garmin C550.  I bought it about six months ago and have found it to be far more useful than I thought.  We live in the Washington DC area and I have found the traffic reporting on the unit to be very useful.  We move it between cars ( I bought an extra suction cup mount so that we have one in each car. )  It was very useful for vacation and around town running.  I found the best price at Amazon.com

Bill

[Vinny]

I looked into it and yes it has golf courses. You can add points of interest as well.

BUT let me advise anyone, any of these units are not 100% accurate to the point. They will get you there but I have found errors in the Mio and a friend has a Garmin and it has errors too. But to be perfectly honest so do Mapquest, Google Maps & Yahoo Maps. These are great for getting you from point A to point B but it might not be the most direct. They also can help if you need to divert around things. They will recalculate a route to get you where you need to go ... again sometimes they believe dead end streets are connected or if a street has changed direction or closed - none will know that for a while.

All makes either use Teleatlas or Navteq maps with whatever software to guide you. Most will have a "home" feature I believe so no matter where you are, you can get home.

I think they are great devices for people like myself who easily can get lost.

[NE-Phil]

I bought a Garmin Nuvi 660. A little overkill as it includes bluetooth, can use the FM frequency in your car radio to announce directions and you can use it with a SD card to play music or view photos.
The bluetooth and FM are both lame - they sound lousy - lots of interference. And I don't really use the music feature. Hey, that's what I have AM/FM, CD, DVD & cassette players for!
But it is a great GPS and that's what really counts. It's very easy to use, has a wider than normal screen, easy to see & very clear directions. Knowing what I know now I would probably get a nuvi 600. Something without the bells and whistles but the same wide screen (Easier on the eyes!).

So my advice is avoid the bells and whistles, you probably won't use them or they don't work well. Just make sure it's a good GPS.

Phil

[mattNY]

Tom Tom one here

Same.  I got mine for $149 online, brand new, and like Boni haven't seen it that cheap again (though $165 or so has popped up a few times).

Here's my take: Either a TomTom or a Garmin Nuvi, both are great for user interface and get stellar reviews.  They each use a different maps database source (TeleAtlas vs. NavTeq), and the NavTeq maps used by Garmin are said to be better in terms of how they route.  I think most people will be pleased with either, I love the TomTom, for the price it's amazing.

[countryboy]

I asked this same question a while back and after lots of research, we finally settled on a Tom Tom. Since the kids decided they liked the English female voice though, we call it Tam Tam...We love it and my husband takes it everywhere he goes. It does get a bit weird though when you start talking back to it  ..  We picked it up on a special sale at Best Buy for $199.00..I have never seen it that cleap anywhere again...

Bass Pro has them for either 119 or 129 on Black Friday. Bj's has them for 129 on Black Friday and Radio shack has them for 139 on Friday.

[Steve]

My Pioneer AVIC-S1 has saved me countless hours of aimless driving around cities where I have no clue on how to find the best route.

My biggest issue...getting it upgraded. :-/

[Vinny]

Steve,

It looks like a fairly new model for Pioneer. I would imagine that updates will become available every so often. Streets don't change that drastically and new developments take a while to get onto other maps as well. Heck, I was using a mapping program from 1999 before I got this to check if Mapquest is giving me accurate directions.

When I bought the C220 it was a replacement for an older model and about 2 months after I bought it an update came out for the previous model - I have yet to see an update for mine yet. The maps are about 1 year old on it so I feel fairly confident that very little is missing.

Of course as technlogy moves on, all these devices will be obsolete and we'll be forced to buy new ones ... No more cassette players in cars, DVD audio came and went, VCR's are almost extinct. SD cards will be gone, auto uplinks from the web via cell phone technology will probably be the thing and you'll be able to talk to it and have it find anything you want and guide you there.

Funny thing is that people on car forums feel that these are not as good as the onboard units. I laugh as we can use it in any car and bring them on vacation with us assuming that we have the maps to take with us. The only thing about onboard units are they are usually large screens. Honestly, having a unit with a rolling display on the windshield, telling me to turn left or right in so many feet, with the name of the street on top and a graphical display with an orange route of where I'm supposed to go is good enough for me.

It's a "toy" I'm glad I bought.

Vinny

[wmccall]

Thanks Everybody.

[thearm]

C330 Garmin is on sales at Wallyworld for 128.00 on BLACK Friday.