<p>Thanks all! We have terrible senses of direction (except hubby is pretty good & he’s generally the driver). I am thinking it would be a useful thing to have & it may save me some grief. I tend to be the navigator & especially when it’s dark or we’re whizzing along, I have a tough time figuring out where we are and should turn.
I’ll check out what Costco has in stock & buy one & think about bringing it to LA when we leave later this month.</p>
<p>cartera - was that Telenav on an AT&T phone? I’ve been thinking about that and hadn’t found anyone who’s done that.</p>
<p>No, it’s Verizon - VZ Navigator. I pay by the month so I can cancel it whenever I want. I have the built in GPS on my Prius and hers is often more accurate.</p>
<p>H recently bought a Garmin Nuvi 760. Works well, but not as well as the built in one in my Lexus – and that one is several years old. Sometimes it takes several minutes for the Garmin to receive the satellite signals, so it can be annoying when you don’t know where to turn and the thing isn’t on yet.</p>
<p>Do any of you with GPS systems find yourselves talking back to them?</p>
<p>swimcat – LOL! We usually just turn the voice off; otherwise we would be talking to it all the time! H’s Garmin has a wide variety of voices/accents to choose from. D & S picked this very proper English man (can’t remember his name) so at least when the voice is on, it’s pleasant to listen to. The one in my Lexus is a woman with an annoying voice, which is why it’s turned off.</p>
<p>OK, Costco had the Magellan 1412, so I got that. They had a coupon a few months ago, but missed that 
but at least they have a good return policy. The Garmin Nuvi they have is a 260 or something, so one of the older models. Will see how this goes in preserving family harmony, since I’m not that great a navigator.</p>
<p>My H bought a garvin - but I use my phone’s VZ navigator (Verizon). Works well - gives good advance notice and street names- and I always have it with me. $10 per month…OK with me. One problem - if you’re in a remote area with no signal…no navigator. Only happened once but it was annoying.</p>
<p>Garmin Nuvi 350, bought for about $180 on ebay. Saved my marriage on college road trip last summer by succesfully navigating us through New Jersey.</p>
<p>We recently bought the garmin 260v; would not leave home without it; we did find an occasional turn right across three lanes when you’d just turned left but it recalculates very well; certainly much better than my map reading. It reads out the street names. Was very funny in Montreal with French street names; St. Jean was street jean but again… heaps better than my map reading even if I got the accent right!</p>
<p>With the portable systems do you pay any sort of monthly fee?</p>
<p>I also just purchased the Garmin Nuvi 260W for all the college visit roadtrips we’ll be taking. I love it! We visited a college last weekend, decided on the way out of town to tour the surrounding area and she kept “recalculating” how to get us back home. I love that she never gets annoyed at me no matter how many wrong turns I take! She just keeps recalculating…</p>
<p>Only one time (in a rural part of our state) did she lose track of us. Somehow the road we were on must have not been on their mapping system. </p>
<p>Its a widescreen version which I would definitely recommend; it’s easier to see. </p>
<p>Oh, and I decided I had to have coffee (you can just plug in gas, restaurants, etc. and ask it) and it found us the coolest, quirkiest coffee place, that I never would have been able to find otherwise, with a delicious latte for the road 
Cool!</p>
<p>My understanding is that you don’t pay a monthly fee but you can pay for enhancements and updates, I think. I’m not finding the Magellan that intuitive, so I’ve had to print out the 61-page manual that I’ll try to figure out over the weekend. I’ll try charging it up over the next few days so I can program it with the LA info so we won’t get lost (or at least not TOO lost). Navigating in big cities is something I don’t enjoy, even with decent maps & at night it’s really a challenge to see road signs for all of us.</p>
<p>
Right. H’s Garmin Nuvi came with a free 3 month trial of real-time traffic updates – supposed to alert you of traffic jams, etc. We didn’t sign up for the service after the trail expired – didn’t find it all that useful.</p>
<p>Ok - thanks. I am mulling getting one for my directionally challenged children. Don’t want to be on the hook for regular fees. </p>
<p>Though I wonder if it would make them even worse. I have a pretty good sense of direction but when I met my friend in Dallas (where I have been quite often) we used her GPS to get to a scrapbook shop - it wasn’t 'till we actually got there that I realized it was in a shopping plaza that I had been to quite frequently. I was oblivious of where we were going because I was just following the directions. For me i found that a little disconcerting.</p>
<p>I bought a TomTom One last Christmas for about $150. It works great - my 18 year old is addicted to it.<br>
Can’t read a map. :eek:
I have never paid any fees and it connects to the usb port so I can update it on my computer.<br>
When traveling you can set it to find gas stations and restaurants - say you want to know if there is an Applebee’s near by or Wal-Mart etc. It is slick. </p>
<p>It does get confused in parking garages however.</p>
<p>They do come in handy - but you DO have to watch the road:</p>
<p>[GPS</a> Sends Another Driver Onto Train Tracks of Doom - Switched](<a href=“http://www.switched.com/2008/09/30/gps-sends-another-driver-onto-train-tracks-of-doom/?icid=100214839x1210151909x1200656508]GPS”>http://www.switched.com/2008/09/30/gps-sends-another-driver-onto-train-tracks-of-doom/?icid=100214839x1210151909x1200656508)</p>
<p>Second time this happened!</p>
<p>Just got an converter so I can use the charger that came with the GPS to plug into the wall. It was under $8 and is about half the size of a hotdog. I notice that Costco coupon book has $40 off Garmin Nuvi 205 if you buy it on-line from Costco.com. I’m sure you can get addicted to the GPS & overly rely.</p>
<p>I have a Garmin iQue 3600 from about 2003. It is a fully functional Palm OS PDA with a flip-up antenna. You can also use an external antenna for better reception. It’s thin and fits into your pocket and has a hi-resolution 320x480 screen. It can play MP3s, store your phone book, appointments, store electronic books. One of the nice things about the device is that the GPS functions are integrated into the applications so that you can find something in your phone book and tap the map icon and it will bring up the location on the screen which you can then route to. You can also input locations using handwriting recognition which can be a lot faster than what you can do with systems with just buttons.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that these are made anymore but mine has provided good service for many years.</p>
<p>It does display the road that you’re on and will also display cross roads along with your speed, time to next branch, ETA and a few other statistics.</p>
<p>Costco has a pink (!) Garmin Nuvi 250 for sale online for $130! I’m thinking about getting them for my girly girls for Christmas.</p>