Rating: 
Summary: Wonder Toy
Review: I had gotten very accustom to my factory installed GPS. When I purchased my new truck, I was not able to get a factory-installed unit. I did some research and decided to give the Garmin street pilot a try. One draw back! I have windows XP and it took me 30 minutes to realize that I needed to download additional software from Garmin. It would have been nice if they would have included it with the packaging. I live in the nations capital and around here there are a lot of circles and one-way streets. I tested the unit around the city and it never got me lost or sent me the wrong way up a street. I decided to take it and my new trick on a trip. I needed to pick up my boat from FL. I new were I was going, but I wanted to see how well it worked. I programmed the address into the unit and it took my right there. Along the way, there was a restaurant I heard of in Daytona. I put in the name and the address popped up. The unit took me right to the front door. On the way back to DC, the boat trailer broke down. The Garmin was able to tell me the name and phone number of a repair shop close by. I called the repair shop and had them pick the boat from the side of the road. It then found a hotel close by and a Steak house. The food wasn't very good, but that would have been asking too much. The next day I used it to find the repair shop and to get me home to DC. This unit is well worth the money and I would put it up against the VERY EXPENSIVE unit that came installed in my car. Good Luck.
Rating:
Summary: You'll wonder how you did without it
Review: >I bought Street Pilot III on Amazon and was delighted to discover it worked exactly like NeverLost (even with the same comforting female voice who never gets upset when I miss my turn and has to inform me she is "recalculating route"). We took it on a driving vacation the next week down to San Diego and it was great. Not only calmly guiding us to our hotels and attractions but when we suddenly felt like a Starbucks or when only a particular brand of fast food would appease the kids, she was always right there to give us the fastest route to the closest branch!This is a must have for anyone who is even a bit of a road warrier!
Rating:
Summary: Go From Wrong Way to Right Way
Review: I can't help but give the product 5 stars. It is a lifesaver for those who get chronically lost. Some of the features I really like: 1) easy to read color screen, 2) audio prompts while driving, 3) automatic recalculation feature when one makes a wrong turn, 4) detour feature - I used this when an interstate entrance was closed off--quite helpful. My wish list for improvements: 1) larger capacity plug-in memory cards, 2) more up-to-date maps, as sometimes the Garmin gives directions for streets that are no longer there (this doesn't happen too often, though) 3) a macintosh version of the software, 4) better instruction manual I do definitely suggest that you use the Garmin around familiar areas first to get the feel of how the system works before taking it out to the unfamiliar places. Overall, well worth the price and peace of mind.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the investment
Review: Not much to add to the excellent reviews that have already been written. This unit is basically for those that want an auto GPS navigation system which would be comparable to ONStar (or other standalone GPS system). The girlfriend thought it was a waste of money until we went on a business/vacation trip and I was gone for the day and she used it to drive around Columbus, OH. After that she too was hooked. The voice navigation is a nice touch as well. Only real complaints is that the Garmin Mapsource software [stinks]. I would rather use software such as Microsoft Streets Plus to synch to my StreetPilot III unit. The ability to pre plan trips in Mapsource is very poor IMHO. However, don't let that stop you from getting the StreetPilot III. This is the best standalone unit out there period. Its not cheap, but if you drive a lot out of town like me, it easily pays for itself.
Rating:
Summary: AFTER USING FOR A YEAR AND A HALF, I SHOULD TELL MY STORY...
Review: OK, here goes: I am somone who is not good with driving directions. Yes, I can get lost a few miles from my house, I'm not proud of that- not one bit, but it's the truth... I purchased the StreetPilot III because I moved to New Jersey. For those of you who don't know, NJ's roads are among the worst in the country. I'll save that discussion for another posting. Anyway, I purchased the SPIII 2 months before moving, and I have to admit I was very skeptical. I thought all the good things that I had read about the unit were simply too good to be true. I can't tell you how wrong I was! After setting the unit up and loading the Ohio maps (where I'm from), I took it outside behind by house. To my astonishment, the unit told me I was on "Joslyn Ally". I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT THE LITTLE ALLEY BEHIND MY HOUSE HAD A NAME UNTIL THE SPIII TOLD ME! Sure enough, I found a teeny-tiny sign that said "Joslyn Ally". So, I told my girlfriend that we had to take it for a spin. We drove around for over THREE hours and tried to get lost. We could NOT. We took wrong turns on purpose, but the unit always put us back on track. We were astonished. Then came the real test: We took a 2 week trip to LA. We have NEVER been there before. I had put all the maps of Southern CA on the card and it was like we knew where we were all the time- I mean, with all the points of interest, we knew where EVERYTHING was. We were driving around Beverly Hills like we lived there for years. I have to say one thing about some of the bad-mediocre reviews I have read. Most of these bad reviews are due to the users not really knowing how to use the product. I am constantly learning little tricks to make the SPIII work better. Even as recently as last week!!! This is the BEST thing I have ever bought in my life and can promise you that you will not be let down. Buy one from Hammacher-Schlemer and they give you a LIFETIME satisfaction guarantee- if you don't like it, you can return it ANY TIME- even a year later, and get 100% of your money back. Yes, they are expensive, but after a year, I returned mine and bought another SPIII (with a bigger data card) from a cheap online retailer! YOU WILL LOVE THIS THING!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic unit!
Review: I have used this thing for over a year. It is really really really cool. All your passengers that are geeks will think it is one of the coolest toys out there and they are right. That said there is only ONE complaint I have - the price of the memory cards. Garmin is treating them like HP and Lexmark treat printer cartridges - charge the customer as much as humanly possible. All Garmin had to do in the first place was use some standard flash card spec, but instead they went the route of a card that hardly anyone carries and is priced higher than the GNP of most countries. Shame on you, Garmin! That said, the thing does a very good job at routing, and is pretty fast at routing too. It does eat batteries, so if you are wanting it to be portable, think again. Buy a handheld unit if hiking is your thing. Also, if you are in the market for a new car that has a GPS NAV system available, go that route instead - they are much faster at computing than this unit. But, if you don't have one or can't get one for your car, then go this route.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers all as promised
Review: Once set up it is simple to use. Ability to use an address to enter a waypoint is really a plus. Impossible to go off route as it gives instant corrections.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Product; Nothing's Perfect
Review: This unit does an excellent job of helping you navigate, whether in familiar or unfamiliar territory. I have lived in the same city for 32 years and I explore a lot. Still, when asking the StreetPilot to calculate routes for some of my favorite Sunday rides, it has managed to show me some nice alternative routes to the ones I've been using. While they may not have been the absolute fastest, they have often been improvements in regard to road surface or traffic. If you like to explore, you'll love this unit. Another example: Last weekend I went to a huge regional softball tournament west of town. Getting out afterwards, traffic was awful, backed up and at a standstill. I simply went the opposite direction, away from town, for half a mile. Then, I took the first reasonable route that went north of town, and asked the unit to calculate a route home. It gave me a good, fast one that probably got me home 20 minutes sooner than if I had gone the "direct" way in all that traffic. I couldn't have done it without the StreetPilot. One huge advantage of this unit is that it accepts a 128 MB data card to load MapSource maps. If you're going on a cross-country trip, you will easily require all of that space. Even the next-biggest Garmin units, which allow 24 MB of storage, are severely limiting by comparison. The voice guidance system is well-implemented. The voice itself is quite pleasant. On a long trip, that's a huge plus. It gives excellent advance notice of all turns, and even tells you to "stay left" or "stay right" when appropriate. A nice feature is the graphic display of the remaining miles/estimated time to the next turn. The only negatives: 1) It's not WAAS-enabled. You will not get the accuracy of position with this unit that you will with almost any other current unit from Garmin or Magellan. This is seldom a problem, since the software is intelligent enough to put you on the correct road, even if accuracy is only within 40 feet at the time. But a few times, it has registered me as being on a nearby side road, most often when that route is approaching mine at an angle of 40 degrees or less. 2) The packaged MapSource software is sometimes out of date. For example, passing through Rising Sun, Indiana to get to the riverfront, it always wants to route me through roads that don't exist anymore, having been eliminated where a Casino was built several years ago. If I didn't know the area, I'd have problems. Again, this is rare. Final note: Read the manual. Become thoroughly familiar with all the functions and all the options. Some (not all) of the complaints in prior reviews could have been resolved if the authors had read the manual.
Rating:
Summary: Street Pilot III - Excellent in the States and Overseas
Review: We took our SP III with us on our last trip to France and used the 128MB memory card to load in all of the data from Paris through Normandy and beyond. There was enough capacity for about half of France. I was very impressed with the routing capabilities and up to date maps available for France. The Unit easily led us to our destinations and provided step by step directions when the routing function was used. It also highlighted our route on the map making following your progress simple, even when driving. Especially nice were the up-close maps of upcoming round-abouts, something common in Europe (and which can be confusing for first timers). The map showed entry onto the round-about and which exit to take, in addition to telling you the information with the voice feature. I was skeptical that the unit would function as well overseas as in the US because I figured the small back roads would not be shown on the map, but was pleasantly surprised. We navigated along highways and through medieval towns with ease. I can highly recommend this unit for use both in the United States and in Europe. While you do have to pay for the maps which are somewhat costly, they are well worth the one time investment. This Unit works as well as or better than any built in or rental car system that I have used.
Rating:
Summary: have a peaceful mind while driving
Review: No more panic when you missing an exit on highway, this thing will automatic re-route and still guide you to the destination. It is portable so you can put it in your rental car while on vacation. My only complaint is that it doesn't allow you to change destination while driving, it's in safe mode. This might be a good idea, but that doesn't allow the person sit next to driver to operate it as well. That is annoying.
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