OK so from the Thanksgiving trip... being lost and adding hours and hours to the ride home... I vowed and swore to god while crying like a baby lost in the mountains... that I would not do another road trip unless I had one of those GPS direction things. Do you have to pay a monthly fee for them to work? Are they easy to use...they look complicated to me. Do the cheap ones work well, anyone have any suggestions? I do not want to spend top dollar on something I barley use, and will probably break.... or "LOOSE" (that was for you phatboy) knowing me, I will LOSE it. I am always behind on technology, I still do not understand MPG players or Ipods. Anyone own a cheap GPS, and happy with it? Someone said you get different voices like Mr.T... saying "Turn Left Suckah"
Look at the Tom Tom. Its pretty good I heard, not sure about monthly fees, I have the factory GPS in my car, but it just uses the map on DVD (in the trunk). We dont pay a fee to use it.
I think you can get them w/o a subscription. I know my ex boyfriend had one years ago and he didn't subscribe to anything. It wasn't one that said, "Left turn 500 feet." It was just like a complicated map to me. I am decent at reading a map. I can't find my way out of a parking garage, but I can get myself where I need to go using only latitude and longitude coordinates and mapblast. I found an old rural cemetery last year that way and didn't get lost. I was very proud of myself. Although I did almost have a head-on collision. The two lane road I took was being worked on and there was a stop light at the start of it. I was sitting there for a really long time and I didn't see one car. I'm starting to overthink it and I convince myself that it must only apply to people Mon-Fri, so I go through the light and into the other lane. I'm half way through and I see all of these cars coming at me and luckily, I was able to get over. I felt like a total asshole. I had to sit there and when I got over, the car that was behind me at the light was behind me again. They quit tailgating me though. They had tailgated me for a while and I think they were part of the reason I overthought the light.
I have a Garmin Nuvi 200. $100-$150 depending on the sales. No subscription needed, easy to use, talks to you (just doesn't say street names on this version.) I set mine to an English female voice. I call her Angelina, my GPSy Rose. The road is lonely.
I've got a few of 'em... None of them require a subscription, unless you want to update the maps on the unit a few years down the road, then you would most likely have to pay for an upgrade DVD or download. Models: Garmin "tracker?" - I dunno, some cheapo black-and-white lanyard device I only use when I'm out hiking in uncharted boonies. All it really serves to do is record a topographical trail of where I've been in the unlikely event I lose track of my surroundings, and give me coordinates/etc (should I want to revisit a spot later.) Magellan SportTrac Color - A few years old, has maps & many other features, used it a few years ago when I went on a road trip to the Keys (and took a boat offshore to fish.) Nice for the time, but dated now. Garmin Windows PDA + GPS unit - Nice all-in-one device, minus being a telephone or a camera. Probably used this one the most out of any of 'em. Magellan Maestro 3100 - New, Unopened, and soon to be placed on ebay. I think this one will yak at you and tell you where to go, probably even play mp3's, and if you piss it off by cheating on it with a rival brand, it'll steer you directly off a cliff. But I'll start the bidding low, and with NO RESERVE!
