I'm looking into buying a GPS unit that is simple, reliable, upgradable, portable. We are looking at: TomTom, Garmin, Lowrance units.

Any advice or recommendations would be apprieciated.

Sarge

A friend bought a Magellan a couple years ago. The unit crashed when he tried to load a factory upgrade program in and he's been very un-successful in getting any support from the mfr. I guess I would recommend avoiding that brand. Lowrance has always been very good with their marine units. You certainly have to think of customer support first, and make sure you check into future upgrades and support. So many companies are building reasonable quality products, but then 2 or 3 years later they change operating systems and will not support the older units.

I've got a TomTom.  So far, so good & lots of info.  Haven't had any crashes on upgrade programing.  The bummer is having to put the addresses in.  Also, when you have a mailing address, but it's not actually a physical address, it won't be able to find it.

I purchased a Magellan about a yr ago. It's fairly easy to use & very accurate , although I would not recommend for trip planning unless you take all interstate hwys. Very good at finding rest,gas,etc when traveling. Input address & such in the computer & downloading in the unit is easy. Tech support in online only & I haven't had any problems. You should know your way around computers though. I use it in the Vet all the time.

Alan

I got a TomTom recently and we're going to try it out on the way to PF. So far - so good with updates and such.

I bought the Garmin Street Pilot 2610 last year, and the Mapsource disk for all the US maps. I also bought a 1 gig card (not all brands will work), so I can put the whole east coast on. The original card did not have enough memory. It works great, and my wife loves the fact she doesn't need to read a map.. But I do keep maps just in case.

One word of advice with the street pilot. I got the remote antennae (optional) as the unit will not fit on the Vette's dash. I put the unit on the consul and mount the antennae on the windshield (suction cups).

I have seen some GPS units come with suction cups to mount on the window. I think the Tom-Tom is like that.

Garmin support is very good.

2 cruzn38852.5478703704

[QUOTE=74-454]

[/QUOTE]

I like the MS Streets too... I wish I could use it with my Garmin Street Pilot 2610. The Mapsource program works OK but I prefer MS Streets and Trips

Thanks for the input so far guy's!

I'm leaning towards the Cobra Nav One 4000. No disc's or PC downloads. Plug n Go. Great reveiws, screen is very readable in all lighting conditions. Little pricey, but I guess you can't have everything.

Sarge

Sarge8138856.3449768519

Update:

Well we purchased a Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS today. The Cobra model is way to big for the dash in the vette. We were impressed with the features, ease of use and compact size of it. Pricey, but I figure what the h$ll you only live once. We tried it out today. It was pretty much on the money for accuracy. PF will be the real test. Can't wait.

Sarge