Shameless plug for which I should get commissions :

I recently purchased a Garmin StreetPilot III from Circuit City (two plugs in one ) for $900 after rebate. After some fits and starts getting the thing set up, I finally got to try it out on the street (from home to work).

All I can say is,

I even took a dinky side street (a traffic-avoiding maneuver that I was already familiar with) against its directions and it recalculated to tell me (correctly) to turn at an even dinkier side street to get back on course .

The only issue was when I got to work it didn't tell me I was at my destination until I was stopped waiting to turn left. Usually it warns about 1/2 mile before and 500 feet before any turn. So looking for an unfamiliar house you may go past it and have to turn around.

Other than that, it's a really great unit and it's portable too. I showed it to 3 co-workers and one has already said they would get one and another is now considering it. The third was impressed but said it was too much money. Maybe so, but it's really great for any kind of travel in unfamiliar areas and I think it's worth it.

Now you don't have to wait for Pontiac to put the Nav in the GP :rolleyes: with this gizmo.

The Screen Savers (on Tech TV) did a report on GPS's on Wednesday. They showed a pretty cheap one, (~$100) but it only showed lat. and long. (but many maps have that now).

They also showed a USB one that hooked up to your computer, that with the software made for the unit, looked pretty cool.

I looked them up - it was the DeLorme Earthmate GPS Receiver, and the software is the DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2003.

Pretty cool stuff. But I don't get lost so I don't really have a need for it.

When I travel long distances, I use my laptop hooked to a AC transformer that is plugged into the cig lighter. For GPS hardware, I'm using the yellow Delorme Earthmate, but Im still running the old 2002 software.

If there is a GPG this year, I'll prolly upgrade to 2003 and drive out to Kansas using it too =)

BTW: $900 smackers for a mini GPS Unit? Wow, thats one pricey gizmo. I'll have to hop on Google and see what it can do for that much