Portable GPS recommendation
 

My husband has suggested that I get a GPS system. I have been using mapquest etc. when I travel. When I get lost I call him. :) I am looking for something portable and not too expensive as I have a habit of dropping devices. What I need is something that will help when I take a wrong turn or miss a turn. I never know what direction I am going when in a strange city. Any help would be appreciated. If not a GPS a good compass that I could quickly see what direction I am going.

Since this is not specifically related to women's travel issues, but more importantly since I think you can get a much better answer there, I'm going to move this to the Travel Technology forum.

Well, you could look for an add-on depending on what type of phone/PDA you carry. Other than that, I hear good things about the TomTom Go units/software.

This discussion pops up quite a bit. Here is a more recent thread on the same topic:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...&highlight=gps

NeverLost - well worth it!
 

I highly recommend the NeverLost system on Hertz rental cars. Nothing to buy or keep track of. Permanently mounted in the vehicle.
$9/day or $45/wk on the rental - and well worth it! I use it nearly every time I rent (and I'm a guy! OK-I'm a techie geek too).

For $390 you can pickup a Magellan Roadmate 300, which is a much more advanced version of NeverLost, touchscreen, 110Mb of memory and portable.

I just purchased a new portable GPS unit to replace an older model and I LOVE IT!

The new Garmin I3 is TINY (about the size of a baseball, maybe a little smaller). It automatically calculates your route, and if you miss a turn, it automatically recalculates it to get you back on track. It gives you turn-by-turn voice directions and the new 3-D view is awesome. The color screen is razor sharp.

Visit www.garmin.com to read more about it. I would highly recommend it. The MSRP is something like $425, but it can be found for $324 from various web retailers. Just do a search at www.mysimon.com or some place like that.

:D

Actually, here is the link which takes you to the I3's info page:

http://www.garmin.com/products/spi3/

True, though my company reimburses me for my rental car expense. I'd have to buy any kind of portable unit myself. This way, I only have one when I need one (when I'm in an unfamiliar city).

I got a Tom Tom Go a couple of months ago, and so far I really like it. It speaks to me in a soft, gentle, confident voice and never berates me when I take a wrong turn. I especially like the portability. I lent it to my son when he was in town, and I have even taken it with me on two extended road trips in rental cars. Next month I'll take it with me when I fly across the country to an area totally unfamiliar to me. It's great not to have to worry about renting a car with a gps. The unit was expensive, but I think worth it.

If you can live with a relatively constrained memory capacity and beeping instead of talking, the Garmin GPS 60C is a steal.

Did you order the John Cleese voice for it too? :)

I picked up the just-released Garmin Quest 2 last week and have been loving it so far. It locks onto satellites many times faster than any Magellan product I have seen (exit a parking garage with Neverlost/etc. and you may not have a signal for 5 minutes versus 15 seconds with this Quest 2).

The reason I liked the quest was its compact size- like a Treo 650, but thicker. A speaker is required for voice navigation, but I find that I don't need that for the most part and the unit includes a speaker that chimes around turn times as well as a 8 hour battery. The speaker is integrated in the charger if you prefer that.

Well, the Neverlost system is quite bad with GPS, their Roadmate units pick up a signal in seconds and have a WAAS fix in under 20 seconds.

We prefer the dutch granny :)

Seriously though, we've got TomTom 5 on my partners O2 XDA IIs here in the UK (I believe it is the M1000 on T-mobile in the US). Just havinig used Neverlost for two weeks in the US, I've got to say, I prefer the TomTom now. One nice thing is that the TomTom 5 does come with a Bluetooth GPS unit that you can put in your pocket and then navigate on foot or bike! A big plus in my book. The big bonus was we were able to upgrade to the XDA II for 90 quid (vs 400 for a new HP PDA), so a GPS solution for under £400 (including mounts).

I have the Garmin 2610. It works very well and you can upgrade the memory for cheap when you buy a new larger SD card. Make sure you check on pricegrabber or some other price comparision site since there are huge price differences between the vendors. I got mine a while ago from an Amazon deal for about 500$.