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decent price

I love portable GPS's, but I love current maps even better...

With the prices for TomTom and Magellan units falling so fast why would anybody really want these anymore? Wouldn't the hassle of having to have your laptop on and with you make this more trouble than it's worth or am I missing something?

#3 so thats how it works then eh? good point. i was wondering what the gps would be like. iono i think its a good price for a gps unit, but iono about how useful it is, unless i'm doing research/ or taking pictures and i want to gps the location, even then the portable gps's could still do the trick.

I just bought one of these a couple weeks ago for our vacation. Worked GREAT, when i used Delormes Street Atlas Plus! I hated the Streets and Trips software and so did the wife. It doesnt tell you street names or routes, etc...just turn right in 3 miles, etc. when you have 6 roads branching off you really need to know a name Supposedly the 2009 software will have this in it, so I would say wait till that is bundled or offered as a free upgrade.

Best thing abou the laptop GPS is that it will work like the HIGH end gps units you can buy. Most low cost gps units do not let you program your own routes, have many POI's, or really do much at all. With the laptop ones you can get free upgrades for consturction information (doesnt help at all since we had constuction all over the place on our trip and it never routed us around, or told us about it) and the MAIN thing is the ability to make your own routes! You can also add POI's from all over the web without the concern of running out of room.

Biggest drawback is the size! There is no getting around this. If I could find a sort of holder for it to keep it on the dash, it might be ok, but I just left the lid closed (with it still running) and had it laying on the dash to give directions. With the Delorme software, we only had to look at it twice i believe.

Volume is the only other concern. My brother-in-law told me about this before i bought mine, but if you have your indows down on the highway it is VERY hard to hear the directions unless you have external powered speakers or can find a way to hook it up to your car system.

Hope this helps.

An InVion for 99 or a refurb TomTom for 100 would probably be a better bet than lugging around a computer to run this.

Software w/o gps $24 at Costco. Very handy when you don't have internet access. No, you can't torrent it and use it. First S&T w/ cdkey.

Thanks for the info #5... a useful post here is a welcome change.

Yes, I second No. 8's comment.