On Wednesday, July 1, 2015 at 8:29:49 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jul 2015 16:33:02 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 7/1/2015 1:02 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jul 2015 12:36:39 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Wed, 1 Jul 2015 07:09:30 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:

I don't get out of the county much but I am going to take off for a few days and be going through heavy traffic places. Normally I'd use the wife's but she's splitting too.

So I decided to break down and get a new Garmin.

I don't been anything really expensive, but something comprehensive for road travel. I have one that's about 7 years old and probably worthless by now unless I but the updates and I'm sure the internal battery is shot too.

Basically I'm asking what model is the best bang for the buck? Or should I just go to Walmart and get one?

===

Do you already have an Android or Apple smart phone? If so you may
find that mapping app to be as good as a Garmin. My Android phone
even has pretty good speech recognition for destination searching. I
think the key is to use a phone with a large, brightly lit screen.
Mine came from Amazon at a very reasonable price and with a very nice
screen:

http://www.amazon.com/Studio-5-5S-Quad-Unlocked-White/dp/B00IWCCYY8


I find it strange that everyone seems to think talking on a cell phone
is a huge danger but screwing with a GPS or any of that other dash
mounted computer hardware is just fine.




Thing is, you can set your destination on a dash mounted GPS before you
start driving and after that it's pretty much hands free. Cell phones
are a whole different story.


What different story. If you are talking to a frustrating Nav
computer, it is easily as distracting as carrying on a phone
conversation. You will also be tempted to look at the display and not
blindly turn when it says you should.

Personally I hate nav systems. I would rather look a hard copy map for
a few minutes and just drive there. It is actually pretty seldom that
I even need a map and I drove all over for work (50k miles a year in
DC).

Talking to a nav system? It talks to me. I glance at it, just like I do my mirrors, gauges, etc. No issue here.