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February 21, 2006
I think we have a winner...
Dawnise's new GPS arrived yesterday, and in stark contrast to the previous attempts, she did all the setup herself, and found the interface intuitive enough to sit on the sofa and tinker with it for a good 20 minutes. We drove around the island for a half hour, deliberately taking wrong turns - half expecting the star-trek computer voice to start berating us at any moment.
The device basically behaved as Dawnise wanted/expected it to; alerting her to wrong (or missed) turns within seconds, and having a new route calculated in less than 5 seconds. The car mounting bracket is well designed - the unit suction cups to the windshield (a dash-mount plate is included for states like CA that forbid any devices being mounted on the 'shield) and the DC adaptor is integral to the bracket. We haven't tried exercising the built-in battery yet, but they claim an 8 hour lifespan, which should be enough for most motorcycle trips. And I've been meaning to install an accessory outlet on the Trophy anyway.
The 128M SD card it came with was enough to load WA, OR, and Vancouver, BC. I've ordered a 2GB card, which their tech support says is sufficient to load all of North America. The version of map data included in the box was a bit old, so we also ordered the (free) update from Garmin. So far their unlock/activation scheme seems unobtrusive enough - and since it actually contacts their server during activation, I suspect it's pretty robust against tampering as well.
More as we get to exercise it more - but the initial signs are very positive, and it was cheaper than the Magellan once you include the additional $100 worth of Magellan mapping software and mounting bracket.
Posted by dberger at February 21, 2006 8:04 AM