Loking at GPS, need input.

[jstuedle]

I am thinking of buying a GPS sometime soon. I have looked at the Tom-Tom and Garmin touch screen models but am leaning toward a pocket PC with GPS. Hp makes several models that are compatible with GPS add-ons. And Garmin has a few models with GPS built-in. I am looking at the $5-600 range. Does anyone have any experience with these or something you like better? TIA, John.

 

[Meysha]

haroo john,
Assuming this is for your car... coz the only tom-tom gps I know is a car one. I don't have a car gps but I do have a GPS, fishfinder, radar and autopilot on our boat... all by a company called Simrad. So I can only give you advice from an aesthetic and features point of view - not a brand comparison.

The most important thing is to be able to read the screen in the sun! Take the machine outside and put it on your dash, twist it round and have sun bouncing off it in all weird directions, try it with your sunglasses on... sometimes the screen may have polarisers built into it, so when you put your polarised sunnies on you can't read a damn thing on the screen... very frustrating.
The reason we spent 10 grand on our equipment was for this visibility in the sunlight. No other equipment that I've seen, from digital cameras (that advertise sunlight visibility but don't) to other boat gps systems, stand up to what we've got... so it's pretty important.

Do they talk? We had one in a hire car in France that spoke to us and it was awesome. It didn't have a displayed map but it'd just shout out instructions from time to time. It was really really good!

Ahh can't think of anything else... xcept make sure the menu's are easy. Ya don't wanna be trying to program some complex vcr-like machine while doing 100ks/hr!

 

[Xmetal]

Ahh welcome to the club, john! i'm giving serious thought to buying a SATNAV unit pretty soon if I get lucky with the money or score a well-paid job.

I found a Navman ICN520 on Ebay for AU$865 where in store they wanted AU$998 so I know where my unit's coming from.

I've heard the PDA type units can be laggy because they run a version of Windows in the background that chews the CPU. :???:

 

[jstuedle]

Thanks guys. I need to find a brick and mortar store I can look at these things. Thanks for the tip Vicky, it would suck to not see the screen in sunlight. And the CPU lag in the PDA type I had already considered. I now have an older Palm, a M125. I figured I would rather have a pocket PC OS, but it is more likely to be slowed by the OS than a Palm I think. Either way, I need to play with a few before I buy. Thanks again. Would love to hear from some more users of these things.