<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by capetown:
Scott and Taf,
Thanks for the tips on Magellan and Garmin.
Based on your feedback I am leaning towards investing in a Magellan Meridian Color handheld GPS unit as I can use this later when I am traveling in the USA.
Oh and Scott...most of my arrivals will be later in the evening or at night so there is no way I want to fumble with a paper map when I can rely (as I do on rentals in the US) on a GPS. In my younger days it was quite adventurous to show how macho I was in terms of finding out of the way locations with a paper map and dead reckoning, but as you get older you realize that time hanging out with those whom you are traveling to visit is more important and fullfilling than driving around lost 
But for those of you on the various GSM networks in western Europe...have you ever used GPS integrated with your mobile? (Garmin was planning on introducing a GSM mobile phone service in 2001) If so how well did the service work with your mobile and who provided the service?
[This message has been edited by capetown (edited 06-02-2003).]</font>
I used the Benefon Track phones that integrated GSM and GPS but it was pretty useless, it doesn't have any value added features unless you combine it with someone else that has one, you can then track each other...
2 online routeplanners you might want to try are
www.lokatienet.nl and
www.vananaarb.nl . Sadly neither is in english. I run Autoroute on my pc and am fluent in dutch so if you need a backup map printed in PDF let me know.