By D. Sewell on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 11:46 am: Edit

I want to purchase a GPS unit for my husband for Christmas. He drives a Disco Series I similar to the one on the Moab video. Any suggestions for the best unit?

By Frank Avent on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 11:55 am: Edit

Depends on how much you want to spend. I used to have a Garmin III+ until it was stolen out of my Disco. Just bought a Garmin 176 - it is actually for Marine use, but has a larger display and you can upload the Garmin Topo and Street software into the unit with a memory cartridge. Same price as the new GPS V.

Go to garmin.com for pricing.

By gp (Garrett) on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 11:57 am: Edit

i personally like the new Garmin GPS V. it is not color, but has lots of neat-O features. turn by turn directions (auto routing) and lots of memory for downloading additional maps from your PC or CD's. not a huge screen, but you can take it from your dash to yourself and hike anywhere within seconds. more accurate (what they say) than some of the older (year or 2) models.

there are some large 'fish finder' ones out there with bigger screens that are nice, but once they are in the truck they pretty much stay there.

here is a link to the best prices that i have seen on this GPS V unit.
http://www.selectzone.com/gps_garmin.htm
this company sells on ebay too i believe.

By p m on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 12:11 pm: Edit

I have a GPS III+ and am happy with that. but, as i found, a lot of dough is spent on making this unit a hand-held - for the same amount of money, you can buy a larger-display marine unit, with the same features etc.

go to http://www.garmin.com indeed, and find a distributor near you. I'd check if West Marine has a Christmas sale.

peter

By Ho Chung (Ho) on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 12:35 pm: Edit

my vote goes to garmin StreetPilot. fits perfect on the dash above the radio.... where the rubber tray goes.

now they have available recordable chips for different metropolitan areas.

By Rob Davison (Pokerob) on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Ther are some differences between the brands, but essentially the 300-500$ range is where the good ones are.

if you own a laptop computer you can buy a device for that and use it.

i have one of the fish finder [Lowrance 1600] ones and it's big screen and many offroad friendly options like tons of waypoints and it's breadcrum feature are nice. click here for link to L:owrance GlobalMap 1660

if you do lots of highway/city driving it is lacking on road accuracy and it doesnt show exits or gas stations and the maps are choppy.

i plan on getting a laptop and having one on there too, so it will pick up wher ethe other leads off, and vice versa.

i think the one garrett pointed uot is pretty nice. garmin v


rd

By Jeff on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 12:58 pm: Edit

i am reall impressed with the emap, by garmin

don't have time to go into it all right now, just with experience it is great for on foot, on trail and on highway, the downloadable data is really nice

By D. Sewell on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 01:36 pm: Edit

I posted the question and we have an iBook (Mac platform). I can spend around $500. It seems that the Garmin is very popular. Is it Mac compatible? Thanks for the help.

By Jeff on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 02:02 pm: Edit

with emap you won't need a computer 75-90 percent of the time

IMHO

By Kent on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 02:59 pm: Edit

I have had two Magellan's and had problems with them. Purchased a Garmin eTrek Vista and love it. It is very easy to use. It even told all the roads and towns I was in in Costa Rica. It is accurate to 10ft. It also has 24 MB of internal memory for downloading map software. Cost about $340.00. It's worth every penny.

By Rob Davison (Pokerob) on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 05:15 pm: Edit

click here to go to the Delorme homepage

delorme is who sells the device that you can plug into your notebook computer and turn it into a GPS. the link above is for the Mac version .

rd

By Erik (Eriks) on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 09:25 pm: Edit

I have the Delorme earthmate that plugs into a laptop. It works great. They have topo software that you can put into 3D. It will also work with a palm pilot for backpacking type of applications when you dont want to carry the big laptop. If I had to buy a GPS unit over again I would get it again. BTW using a big screen of a laptop is easier than a handheld unit IMHO.

By p m on Thursday, December 06, 2001 - 09:28 pm: Edit

garmin is better. rob, shuddup

peter

By Seann (Seann) on Friday, December 07, 2001 - 02:32 pm: Edit

Would I be able to tap a Garmin into my laptop?


Seann

By gp (Garrett) on Friday, December 07, 2001 - 02:39 pm: Edit

there is all kinds of 'free' software out there where you can create profiles, overlays, etc. on your pc or laptop. ESRI has some great programs that are not free that work seemlessly with some of the GPS units i have used. but for the most part there are some basic programs out there that will do the trick. we have even downloaded some free 2 meter resolution aerials and plotted our routes on them just for fun to see how accurate we were with the GPS. was about 5-10' off most times.
depending on what you want to do there is just about anything for everyone. and most GPS units i have seen and used (even the cheaper ones) are capable of downloading to a pc.

By p m on Friday, December 07, 2001 - 02:44 pm: Edit

Seann - yes.

peter

By Ali on Friday, December 07, 2001 - 05:15 pm: Edit

I have a Garmin 3+ and it's been working out well for my wife and I. It's great for hiking, mt biking, off-roading, in town driving, etc.. I travel quite a bit for work, so having the exit info that includes (hotel, restaurants, gas stations) is a big plus. On interstate trips, it's nice to know which travel rest stops has what type of amenities. I can see it helping out parents who are traveling with kids. It also has a built it decent road map of USA, Canada and Mexico which is helpful.

The down side is that it's portable so the screen is small. The new GPS V seems to have crisper LCD which is great. Some of the newer cars have special windshields that can affect signal strength on the smaller units with built in antenna. Of course you can always buy all sorts of goodies for these things like external antenna, mounts, etc..

My two cents

By D Cantrell (Discodad) on Friday, December 07, 2001 - 05:32 pm: Edit

Has anyone used the Rand McNally GPS attachment for unit for the Palm X ??
DD

By Brian Jackson (Nerover) on Friday, December 07, 2001 - 06:10 pm: Edit

My favorites are:

1. Any big-screen Marine GPS with loadable mapping software. It's easy to read and no laptop to mount.


2. Garmin StreetPilot Color. Expensive, but everything you need! This unit is awesome!


3. Garmin StreetPilot. Same without color. Awesome!


4. Garmin Emap. What I have. Has everything the III+ has, except the voltimeter and portrait/landscape views and will take up to (I believe 16mb). AND, it's only $189!


5. Garmin III+. Just find it a little hard to use and read. I think for my preferences, the Emap has a better layout, though they are very similar.