My first GPS, a Garmin 2610 is still alive, though I never use it anymore.

I forgot it one trip and finally bought a new one to replace that brick of a device. It was a great product for its time. It was very slow to acquire the sat signals, and didn't have things like lane guidance, but it pretty much had everything else (necessary) that the modern units have.

But at their current prices, you can get a decent mid-range product, even with the so-called lifetime map updates (which I find useful on garmin, but didn't find that useful on a cheap tom tom one I keep in the car on Hawaii to find local street addresses) and traffic for around $150 - $200. Lifetime doesn't really mean your lifetime, it means the lifetime of the unit.

If your unit last you more than a couple of years, your going to have new neighborhoods, new roads, new interchanges, reconfigured highways that will be updated if you get the updates and the map service is decent.

Sure, it's a personal choice if you think its worth it or not, but they don't really charge that much of a premium for the lifetime map updates like they used to. They come out with new models every year and usually there isn't that much difference between similar models from the current crop and and the previous model year, so that's how you can save money on this stuff. They used to charge a large premium for the map updates and perhaps they still do if you buy the update service unbundled but if you buy the unit with the updates, it's not that much of a premium.

-David