Yeah, it's not mounted into the dash, and it doesn't have pretty colors, but if you just want the functionality of a GPS with street level navigation -- I got just the thing.

After much GPS trial and error, I am now convinced that Garmin's eTrex Legend handheld device is the most cost effective GPS for a car. It's about $200 and comes pre-loaded with a fairly detailed world map with sufficient detail to handle long distance highway trips. For ~$150 more, you can buy a CD of highly detailed road maps or city maps (with store/restaurant/etc. names and phone numbers). These can be loaded onto the Legend.

You can only get a single city map in the Legend at a time. For instance, I have the basemap of the national highway system with a political map of the rest of the world (including major cities), and I've added a detailed map of New York City. If I wanted to go to Seattle, I'd have to trade NYC for Seattle, since they both fill the 8MB of memory. Garmin sells a very similar device for ~$300 that has 24MB of memory, so it could hold roughly three complete metropolitan areas.

The nice thing about these devices is that you can take them away from the car. They're cheap, they work very well, and they keep you from getting lost on the road, and in the woods.

Anyway, I hope that helps someone, since I found GPS shopping to be confusing as hell.

 

Whoops. I forgot to mention that you can get detailed road maps, too, as an alternative to detailed city maps. I'm not sure how much memory the road maps need, because I don't have that CD. Hmmm, I wonder if there's a warez channel on IRC for these things.

 

The more I think about it, the more I think you need the 24MB Vista model.

I'm just going to keep talking to myself out loud here, in case anyone cares.

 

There's also the eMap device which is expandable up to 128MB. That's getting into the $500-600 range, though.

Decisions, decisions.

 

Hey Sunchild,

hope you don't mind my butting into your conversation, but here goes...

I bought a Garmin eTrex Legend about three months ago, and it's great. Nice handheld size, waterproof, very nice high resolution grayscale display (small pixels, though, if you're eyesight is going), pretty decent user interface.

I bought the MetroGuide CD, for detailed city maps. You're right, the basemap (in ROM) is decent, but the MetroGuide maps are MUCH more detailed. With one loaded, you can find an intersection, or see a (somewhat outdated) list of facilities at a given highway exit, for instance.

More memory would be nice, I'd consider the eTrex Vista, but for me the eMap's out (not waterproof, not as good a display).

I also can connect the Legend to my laptop to display a moving map display on the computer, and do more advanced route planning.

A GPS receiver also gives you more accurate top speed info than the car's speedometer.

Definitely a fun toy. And no worries about getting a signal through the car's roof

Ted

 

You guys crack me up!

Thanks for the GPS info!

 

If you own a laptop let me offer a very satisfactory GPS system. I

 

I find that the eTrex Legend's basemap is much less detailed than Street Atlas USA 6.0 (Macintosh), but the MapSource MetroGuide maps that I upload to the Legend are about equal to SA6.

Having a handheld mapping GPS is a lot more convenient that having to be tethered to the laptop. It is nice to be able to use it with the laptop, too.

I use a Macintosh PowerBook G4 Titanium, with a USB-serial adaptor, and VirtualPC (to run the Garmin MapSource software.)

Ted

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sunchild
[B]There's also the eMap device which is expandable up to 128MB.

 

Anyone used one of the GPS/Palm combos?

I've got a Palm Vx and keep thinking of getting the Magellan GPS Companion ... https://store.palm.com/Catalog/ProductDetai...uctNr=980588-01

Have fun,
Derek