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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

No More Driving Worries

Current Mood:

Remember how anxious I would get when I would go on a business trip to a new city because my sense of direction is so bad I can't find my way out of a paper bag?

That's never going to happen again :-). Well, not about my sense of direction, about my being anxious when driving in a new city :-).

Steve and I got a GPS for the truck :-). It's a Garmin C330, and we just absolutely LOVE it :-). It's normally sold for $450, but Walmart had it on sale for $330.

Things we love about it:

Touch screen display
The maps are already pre-loaded into the unit (some models need external memory cards)
Voice prompts: For example,"In .3 miles, turn left." Then when you get closer to the turn, "Turn left." Then after you turn, it'll say something like, "Drive for 1.2 miles then turn right." I like it when it says that because I know ahead of time if I should stay on the left or right lane
If you miss your turn, the computer finds a different way for you to get back on track. It'll say, "Recalculating..." then 1-2 seconds later it'll give you a new route. I've been having a lot of fun taking wrong turns on purpose :-).
You can save where you currently are in your Favorites so you don't have to type the address if you need to get to this location again in the future
You can customize the settings to avoid highways (useful when you don't want to deal with rush hour traffic), toll roads, U-turns (useful when you're on a non-divided highway), and unpaved roads
It's portable. We can move it from car to car if we need to, like if we're riding with someone else on a trip
The display colors change depending on whether it's daytime or nighttime so you can see the screen better

The only negative (and it's not even really that bad) thing I can say about it is that there's a limit to how detailed the maps are. But then, I expected that. It would be unrealistic to expect the unit to know EVERY teeny tiny two-lane road :-).

I could go on and on :-). If you'd like to see a flash demo, click here.

I like Garmin's holiday commercial :-). Creative use of the Carol of the Bells song :-).

Labels: Retail

Posted by Unknown | 4:45 AM | 2 Comments |

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