The NAV systems from the aftermarket companies, Alpine, Kenwood, etc IMO are far superior than a Streetpilot setup. My mom has the streetpilot and I used it for a month in my S before I installed an Alpine NAV system.

The main problem is access times. Since it is ram based the Streetpilot is quite slow in initial navigation routing, and re-routing if you go off course. This can be critical if you are lost and in an unfamiliar area. Often times my NAV has rerouted me immediately when I remember the streetpilot was still thinking.

The Aftermarket systems are CD-Rom based (and newer ones DVD)and the wait is pretty much instantaneous. Also the Streetpilot is limited to regions in small blocks. If you are traveling you either need to get a huge (expensive) memory card or forgo street level details.

In terms of looking OEM you can get pretty creative with both options. I have seen the streetpilot setup fabbed into where the visor goes and this is pretty cool and out of the way. With an aftermarket system your options are cutting the dash in the JDM oem spot or going with a screen head unit and modding that somehow.

Also if you want DVD for movies, yes a screen can/will muti source, including DVD, NAV, Video games, camcorder etc. Most is not practical for daily driving , but heck if ur building a show car who cares!

 

Yes, Lucid was describing 2003 Models of Alpine, Clarion, Kenwood etc. Panasonic should have a model out too.

A system like this offers an all in one solution and should be considered. Also you can add onto it. Clarion's line of products baffles me - I guess they expect people to have cams, and 5 LCD screens in their Suvs.

the 350Z is not in the same class as the S. It's 4 years newer, its a coupe, all together different.

 

Actually a good RAM based system would be FAR faster than a DVD ROM system. The reason why the Garmin systems are slower is that they have a slower processor and less RAM than the DVD-ROM based systems.

Heck, a hard drive based system would be faster than a DVD-ROM system too. You would just have to download the software onto the hard drive. My computer with MapPoint could reroute faster than a car.

I would expect that the laptop approach mentioned above would theoretically be the fastest as you could control the amount of RAM, hard drive and DVD-ROM drive speed. I was thinking of doing the laptop approach so I could remove it from the car when not in use and not mess with the stock look. You could easily get a connection made to your stereo from the laptop for voice controls too. I also considered using my Pocket PC, but the display is about as small as the Garmin products.

 

Keep in mind that it's all a tradeoff... I have the Honda/Acura system in the MDX and previously in the Odyssey. But I needed something for the NSX, S2000, RSX and CRV... the portability of the Garmin system was important - though the slowness does get frustrating at times, but for the $1600+ savings and the portability, it was worth it to me.