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GPS Systems

Posted: February 25th, 2013, 11:28 pm
by lynchburgwildcats
Anyone got any advice? I don't need anything fancy, just something that works, is reliable, and accurate.

Yes, I know I can use my phone, but I don't want to. I had been using my old phone with an app that does offline maps, but apparently the GPS has died on it.

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 12:18 am
by flamehunter
Always know where you are going before you start relying on your gps. That's my advice.

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 12:35 am
by RubberMallet
get a garmin. my tom tom is terrible. my dad just got a garmin on slickdeals with traffic, gas prices and unlimited updates for like a 100 bones.

i own both a garmin and tom tom.

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 1:02 am
by lynchburgwildcats
RubberMallet wrote:get a garmin. my tom tom is terrible. my dad just got a garmin on slickdeals with traffic, gas prices and unlimited updates for like a 100 bones.

i own both a garmin and tom tom.
What makes it suck?

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 8:56 am
by Innocent Bystander
I will answer for the Tom Tom question....
We own one and it frequently gives directions that take you in the opposite direction you are going and will occasionally tell you to make turns where there is no road. The worst case of this is when we were traveling in the mountains of West Virginia on a narrow winding road on the side of a mountain and it kept telling us to turn right (which was down the mountainside). For some reason, our Tom Tom was trying to kill us. My in-laws have a garmin and have had a much better experience with it.

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 9:17 am
by PAmedic
love our Garmins. Have 2 and had them in all the rigs where I used to work.

Even when you think you know better, and look at the thing sideways... it's usually right.

just make sure you have good local knowledge- sometimes updates on road closures, etc, dont get uploaded for a while.

Highly recommend the Garmins

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 10:19 am
by lynchburgwildcats
Innocent Bystander wrote:I will answer for the Tom Tom question....
We own one and it frequently gives directions that take you in the opposite direction you are going and will occasionally tell you to make turns where there is no road. The worst case of this is when we were traveling in the mountains of West Virginia on a narrow winding road on the side of a mountain and it kept telling us to turn right (which was down the mountainside). For some reason, our Tom Tom was trying to kill us. My in-laws have a garmin and have had a much better experience with it.
Interesting.

I had been using the CoPilot app on my old Android phone and that has worked really well, and with it being offline maps I didn't have to have a data connection either. It gave me bad directions one time, but I think that was my fault for using the in-app search for a place instead of going online and getting the actual address.

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 26th, 2013, 10:28 am
by adam42381
Garmin is awesome unless you're out in the middle of nowhere. We were near Beech Mountain with my parents a couple years ago and were heading to Linville Caverns. Garmin tried to get us to turn into the side of the mountain where there was no road. Once we (obviously) kept going, it re-routed us across the mountain by way of a one lane dirt road which wasn't maintained at all. It's usually good in bigger towns and cities, but I'd bring a map with me just in case.

Re: GPS Systems

Posted: February 27th, 2013, 5:24 pm
by RubberMallet
my only complaint with garmin is ours is touchy with entering in something. the keypad screen kind of blows. but the tom tom wasn't much better. it seems if i update our tom tom and then update the garmin the garmin ALWAYS has more stuff than the tom tom. if i want chickfila's i have to specifically find the chickfila file on their website...stuff like that.

i also like that i can throw my lakemaster chip into the garmin and throw it in a few boats that don't have gps fish finders that we take on various fishing trips.