Garmin Nuvi for the Holidays
November 13, 2007 on 7:03 am | In Recent Posts |I commonly see Garmin advertisements in the USA Today paper that is left at my hotel door step every morning and to my pleasant suprise today they have a new ad featuring a Classic Mini! Looks like an 60’s version and a cutie, yeah the girl is cute too.
I have owned various versions of the Nuvi over the years. My first was the Nuvi 350 which got me through the cross-country MINI Takes the States, the Nuvi 660 widescreen that I ultimately gave to Jayne because it was just too wide for me to carry around and really wanted a version that offered both US and European maps and now the fully loaded Nuvi 370 that features maps for U.S. and Europe, MP3 player, audio book player, FM traffic receiver, Bluetooth® wireless, speaks street names and came in rather handy two weeks ago when I was zipping around Holland and Belgium. The FM traffic reciever is a must for anyone living in congested cities as it easily helps reroute you and avoid the traffic and warns you of upcoming traffic well before. The Bluetooth is a nice feature but seldom used.
The handheld GPS market has been booming over the last couple of years and I see more and more cars equiped with these on their windscreens. Considering the cost of in-car navigations units reaching excess of $2k Garmin now has some 20 different Nuvi models that can fits everyone’s budget and feature sets, recently coming out with more economical 200 series Nuvis.
Ian Cull who has been a TomTom owner for years just recently upgraded to a new TomTom and we await his review. Looking over the new TomTom 720/920 models they have some new innovative features like Map Share that enables you to add to, update and personalize your maps instantly. It also lets you share with others. The bluetooth features seems a bit more advanced and robust then the Garmin and I think the route navigation offers more information then the Garmin. If I was getting a new GPS I would probably opt for the TomTom 920. We may need to swap units for a week to do a full review 
Regardless of which brand you purchase the key thing is to get one that has the features you need and keep it updated with the yearly map and periodic software updates to ensure that the units are always performing optimally.
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Ah yes the Nav craze.
I understand this if you’re in an unknown city, country and so on. This is what I don’t get.
Kittie and I recently went with some friends up to Tracy California to check out a race track and a goofy race he wanted to participate in. He had never been to this town so he used his Mercedes built in nav on the way up. OK, I get that. Even though a simple, I guess antiquated, paper map would have told us it was how to get there. It’s not like we were in Germany, we were in California.
On our way home he used this thing also? We had but 2 freeways to use and I’m pretty sure he knew how to find his house which is next to ours. We had to listen to this german lady tell us to “Make a U turn, you’ve missed your exit” and more all the way home. He then nearly got us in an accident fiddling with this thing while… entering the freeway?!
Seems there is enough distractions, people text messaging, mobile phones now this, while driving who needs us having more?
I will say that the next time I go to a foreign country I’m going to take one. We I drove in Florence where we were lost for an hour.
Most be my age but I just enjoy driving my MINI and if I need to find my way someplace new it’s kinda neat to get out a MAP or even Google it, and then use my memory. LOL
Comment by R Ballardini — November 13, 2007 #
Oh Yeah, she is cute.
Comment by R Ballardini — November 13, 2007 #
Just think of all the tree’s we’d save if we got rid of paper maps altogether
I often use it even in cases where I know how to get to a location one for the traffic feature of informing me where the bottlenecks are and two for the estimated arrival time. Granted most of the time I am alone in the car and find the British female voice therapeutic.
It was priceless driving around Holland and Belgium where it was difficult at best to find street signs and I was more adventurous taking detours and being able to use the Points of Interest to find attractions (MINI dealerships) near my current location and all the while knowing the Nuvi would just recalculate and get be back to where I needed to go. Driving on long trips it is invaluable knowing you can look up and see where the nearest fuel stations, foods, etc are.
I grew up using a papermap and they are great for larger roads but when you get off the beaten track it is challenging though not impossible.
Comment by jcwgp — November 13, 2007 #
I agree with most of what you are saying of course but it just seems like another distraction for those less conscience feeble minded twits among us.
I’d defiantly use one in europe next time over. Got to go see my daughter’s family and my grandboys soon. I haven’t met the youngest one yet, BAH!
Oh and I found the german accent exceedingly irritating! Achtung! Turn your ass around!
Comment by R Ballardini — November 13, 2007 #
It’s re-assuring, Robert … last week in CA I certainly could have found my way around between airport/hotel/work/etc with paper maps, but TomTom gave confidence (especially in the dark) that I was not going the wrong way.
On the Sequoia roads, it was fun to see what twisties were coming up.
I’ll agree on the distration thing sometimes - especially when you’ve just bought a new “toy” and are checking out all the features
George,
Quick thoughts so far on TomTom 920:
It’s new and apparently it has some bugs!
TomTom HOME (the program that links it to the web) also seems very buggy.
It doesn’t say “on the left” / “on the right” when you get to your destination, like your Garmin does.
The ability to tell it about map errors is great - but the fact that too many map errors are present is not so great! I believe TomTom are buying/bought TeleAtlas, it seems their plan is to get users to fix their poor mapping data
Comment by Ian C. — November 13, 2007 #
I wish we could have used one during my racing days. They were banned after it was figured they were to big an expense for most teams. Big teams still had them though! They were really expensive back in 1980’s. Robby Gordon’s team had a Helicopter, 5 chase trucks, complete engine and trans replacements and so forth.
I understand the coolness factor and I would use one in the incidents you speak of Ian. But Kittie and I have had some very memorable experiences “Looking” for a place in the middle of some new town we went to in the middle of nowhere, USA.
The best one was being lost 3 times in Italy. Ciana, Florence and Peruggia in a Fiat MultiPla. It made for a irritatingly fun day and many glasses of vino in the evening. I think we did 3 laps around Ciana until we figured that we were lapping it and made a left turn and asked a local, “Dove l’inferno è ciana?” He said, “Siete qui” (”You’re here!”) We headed for the first Enoteca we could find and had a laff.
To each his own. Maybe I should buy one of you or George’s cast offs?
Comment by R Ballardini — November 14, 2007 #
BTW… what are the images on the unit the “Cute” girl is holding?
Comment by R Ballardini — November 16, 2007 #
it’s not just a gps it has many other features like lookup places of interst like Food, lodging, fuel, attractions, shopping, entertainment, recreation, hospitals, banks, transit, auto services plus travel features like language translation, travel guide, mp3 player, audible book player, world clock, currency converter, calculator now it is was a also a phone then we’d be all set.
Comment by jcwgp — November 17, 2007 #
Just give me a Michelin map, and I’m all set.
Comment by pbraun — November 17, 2007 #
I’d bypass this gadget for an iPhone but I like eggs. I hear ya pbraun.
Comment by R Ballardini — November 19, 2007 #