On 20 Oct 2003 13:43:04 GMT, Ignoramus13873
wrote:

My old trusty Magellan 320 gps can no longer acquire any satellites.

So I am looking for a new GPS. I want to buy something that has both
marine features (navaids, bearings, MOB etc etc) as well as car
navigation features (preferably downloadable maps), laptop connection
capability etc. And I want it to be under $300. Is that realistic and
if so, what are my alternatives?

I just bought a Garmin eTrex Legend for $150. It comes preloaded with
navaids, you can download maps, etc. It does NOT have an MOB button
though. You can simulate it by holding down the click stick for a
second to insert a regular waypoint (001) and then goto that waypoint.
That takes 3 or 4 seconds as opposed to the fairly immediate action of a
MOB button.

It replaced my broken Garmin GPS 45XL. I just used the Legend for a
trip last week and it worked pretty good. I even made my own map for
the trip with by loading scanned charts into oziexplorer and using
mapedit to draw some of the features I was interested in over the chart.
I was surprised just how good the things I mapped turned out to be when
I got there for real. However, I still miss some of the features of the
45XL and would still be using that if it didn't go south on me.

In short, the eTrex Legend is pretty good all around mapping GPS that is
useful for boating, especially with the preloaded navaid database. It
definitely has the most features for the money that I could find.
However, if it's just for boating, I'd recommend something else.

Steve