I got a Magellen with the Conti Tires (a Pro-mo they were doing when the Jag needed new tires) and have been pretty happy with it.

My Garmin Nuvi 350 works great for my needs.

I have a Magellan Roadmate - it sucks. It routes poorly, sometimes sending one in one direction for miles only to have us U-turn and double back. This has happened a few times. It has also routed us (by us I mean my employees who apparently have no sense of direction, nor the inclination to look at a map) miles (as in hundreds) out of the way. One time a two hour ride was turned into an 8 hour ride. There are no "fixes" according to the Magellan website. Never again.

I tried a Tom-Tom but returned it immediately. It sucks too. As mentioned by others, the North American maps are not so great. Forget about navigating around Canada. Even though it has the maps for Canada, they are woefully inadequate.

Stick with Garmin. Much, much better maps. I was just at Costco and they had one for $169.00. I think it was the 250W. Maybe not the latest greatest, but still better than even the best Tom-Tom or Magellan because no matter how many bells and whistles you ad, if the maps suck, the maps suck.

New maps come out about April. (2009 map came out last April) That is when the newest models come out too. Get one with the latest map only. Prices drop on models from that date on. They keep getting faster and better. I have had 2 garmins now and my daughter has had a garmin and a TomTom. They are both comparable. The nuvi 255w was $299 in April and is down to about $225 or so now. Same for the Tomtom one xl 330s. They were similar new models that came out in April w 4.3" screens.

I wonder how I got along without a GPS now that I have used them. They have saved me gas and time enough to pay for themselves. I would not get a cheaper model to save a few bucks.

They are very handy for finding things like food when you are on a trip. No more wondering how far off the exit the place is. No more stopping to ask directions, No more getting lost while on a detour. Phone numbers are given to call businesses with your cell.

The only negative is, they do attract theft if you leave it in your vehicle.

My wife used my company car to go to the mall a few months back and when she returned, the Garmin GPS was still there but my Valentine 1 was gone.

You can buy brand new 255s all day long on Ebay for $199.00 and "Buy It Now". I know you wanted to buy local, but that's not where the deals are. If you buy today you would likely have it by weds.

Someone said the TomTom and Garmin are comparable. Maybe until you plug in an address that doesn't exist on the TomTom map. It's common knowledge that the TomTom maps are inferior. I wouldn't take one for free.

If you haven't already, check for yourself on Cnet.com or GPSreview.com. Good info there.

GARMIN uses NAVTEQ maps. Navteq was bought by Nokia for 8.1 billion dollars. Nokia's makes its own brand GPS is called Navigon.

TomTom gets their map data from TeleAtlas (same place Google does), not from Navteq. Navteq had approached Garmin when Garmin had made a higher offer than TomTom to purchase TeleAtlas. Navteq made a long term deal to supply their maps to Garmin to get them to cancel the offer for the purchase of TeleAtlas.

Here is a link http://www.gpsreview.net/navteq-vs-tele-atlas/ to compare the two. They are indeed very similar. I have found errors in each. Here is one graph that compares them a year and a half ago.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1228609759.jpg

I agree that bigger is much better for ease of programming etc., but how much better is for actual driving? I've used, but never owned, a car GPS. I do own a few hand held Garmins. The viewing area of widescreen Garmins are 1 inch wider, but only .11 inch taller than non-w units.

Isn't the car almost always heading to the top of screen? So while the view is much wider, the view of where you actually heading is almost the same for either standard or widescreen. Wouldn't it make more sense to set the widescreen view 90 degrees? It would look odd, but be more useful to see what is coming up ahead rather than what is off to the sides. We'd have to call it the Tallscreen view. Of course it would block visibility, especially with a windshield mount.

I'm leaning toward buying the wife the Garmin nuvi 360 with current maps.

You may want to consider the Mio-brand. Not as well known in the USA as Garmin and TomTom, but it works very well. I bought my wife one a couple of years ago, and she loves it! We like it so much, I then bought my mom-in-law and my sister Mio's. C230 model, IIRC.

Just a counterpoint...
-Z-man.

I got the low-end Tomtom 130 and this thing is just amazing!!
For $100 bucks you can't go wrong.
The higher-end do more stuff like bluetooth and other stuff that you don't really need, I think...

If you're on a budget and for a solid GPS the tomtom 130 is perfect

It does speaks, plan routes, POI, etc..

I bought her a Garmin nüvi 780 from Best Buy for $269. https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&pID=13479

It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but she's worth it. She was quite pleased. Her & her new boyfriend got horribly lost a couple weeks ago, so it turns out that it is a timely gift. I'm going over to help her get it set up today. Garmin told me that the 2009 maps are a free download within 30 days of registering online. For $300, you would think they would include a carrying case, oh well.

A very nice choice. Good price too.