Rating: 
Summary: Expensive, but well worth it!
Review: Please allow me to preface this review with the fact that I have absolutely no sense of direction. For those with excellent sense of direction, this may seem like an extravagant purchase until they come down in cost.
I had to travel to California recently (I only lived there my whole life before 1999), but since I had never driven in California before, I was quite nervous about doing so. The rental car had a GPS very similar to the Street Pilot, and using that gave me a great sense of confidence in driving around.
Shortly after my return I realized how badly we needed a GPS in our car. The Street Pilot was the best option for us because it has all the features of a factory-installed auto GPS, but the added convenience of being portable- now when I head out of town I can take the Street Pilot rather than having to rent a car with a GPS. Not to mention the Street Pilot is about 1/2 to 1/3 of the cost of a factory-installed system.
Some of the other reviewers have complained about how long it takes the Street Pilot to recalculate a route once the vehicle has gone off-route. I have intentionally gone off-route several times just to see how it performs, and I have been very pleased. It does take a few seconds, but from my experience it did not take so long that I got any further off-course than I already was.
A feature that I found to be very helpful in the Street Pilot which was not in the rental car's GPS is a search by company name. If you're looking for a department store, but you can't remember its address, just search by the name, and the Street Pilot will navigate you to the closest one. If you're looking for that great Chinese restaurant a couple of miles away, but you can't remember the name, you can search for Chinese restaurants in your area and find the correct one based on its address. Want to order ahead, or put your name on the seating list? Once the Street Pilot finds the restaurant you're looking for, it displays their phone number on the monitor as well.
About the only two complaints I have about the Street Pilot are very trivial. On the rental car I used, the GPS would automatically lower the volume on the stereo when the GPS needed to announce an instruction. Being an external unit, the Street Pilot does not have this luxury. Since I tend to listen to music, well, at ear-splitting volume while driving, it does take a little getting used to lowering the volume when using the Street Pilot around town, but again, this is a very minor complaint given all of the positive features the Street Pilot has.
My other complaint is that occasionally it does give directions which are not the most direct route. I used this on a trial basis in areas I was familiar with just to see how it performs, and I did find myself thinking on occasion "why is it telling me to go this way, when that way is much more direct?" Especially since I live within a half an hour of Garmin's world headquarters, it would seem to me that they would at least know the most direct routes around here! But even at this, the Street Pilot DOES get you to the correct destination every time, even if it sometimes takes an indirect route.
I noticed that the package includes both a beanbag mount and a permanent dashboard mount for the Street Pilot. Since Street Pilots have a way of being swiped, my suggestion would be to always use the beanbag mount, since a permanent mount could cause thieves to break into the car to find the GPS that is no longer in the car. I drive a new Jetta, and I did not want to get sticky stuff all over my dashboard, so I chose to try out the beanbag. It does not slip, even when making sharp turns. I suppose if I were in a collision this would not be the case, but in normal driving, the beanbag is great.
Of course, as others have advised, do not leave your Street Pilot in the car unattended for any reason. But given the fact that you're going to be spending around $1G for this puppy you probably already knew that.
And one other safety feature that I think is great, but others might be annoyed by it: once you are driving, you cannot change the destination; it goes into a secure mode. To change the address, you need to stop the car. This may be a nuisance to some, but given how badly people drive while talking on cell phones, it's probably best that Garmin tries to curb people from pressing all sorts of buttons on their GPS while zipping down the road at 75 MPH.
Rating:
Summary: great toy...
Review: This Street Pilot III GPS Deluxe Pkg is a wonderful gadget. Especially for women I think it gives you confidence when you are out buy yourself driving. You don't get so nervous. It's the best
Rating: 
Summary: Great for travel (if you can take the space)
Review: I use mine for business travel - It goes carry-on with my notebook. I have the memory loaded with all the areas I go often, and use it to find customer sites, places to eat, etc. Works great. Has some trouble keeping up with left/right turns when there are many turns in a row (eg: parts of SF). I want to see the PDA version. :)
Rating:
Summary: Getting Better All The Time
Review: After using the earlier Color Street Pilot for a couple years I was delighted to have the routing and talking features in this unit. I have a fair amount of experience with Lexus' built-in GPS system as well as the Hertz Neverlost system, both of which I consider "permanently mounted". None of these are perfect and the Talking Street Pilot certainly is a great value.Pros: Adequately accurate, adequately fast (most of the time), turn by turn instructions, audible instructions so you don't have to take your eyes off the road, generally good routing, availability of large memory cartridges so you can keep a number of geographic areas "on line" - you can pick & choose which ones. Con: This unit seems to have trouble discerning whether it's on the freeway or the service road, especially when first entering the freeway or driving in one of the rightmost lanes after passing a major interchange - I don't recall experiencing this with either of the two permanently mounted units. General caveats: As with all units, the most direct route is not always reported; interestingly I've had the most trouble on this point with the Lexus GPS. There is a lag time if (or the GPS thinks) you are off course; the Street Pilot seems to take a bit longer on average than the others to recalculate and you could be further off course by the time it finally catches up. The Street Pilot must have a line of sight to at least 3 signals (4+needed for 3 dimensional and more accurate positioning) and may take a while to acquire them. If you're not keeping the unit on the dash, you'll need the separate antenna (it works fine from the inside of the windshield). Performance degrades around tall buildings and disappears in covered parking areas (somehow the Lexus system kept working, I suspect through some inertial sensing devices). All GPS' I've used have occasionally gotten confused on the exact location (sometimes off several blocks, but typically corrected within a minute or two) and occasionally give really bizarre turns - a right turn, u-turn then another right turn when continuing straight would work. Not all streets are present or accurately depicted. I've noticed a couple incidents of the Street Pilot showing a street as cut through when it wasn't. As always, use common sense and good judgment when evaluating information presented by the GPS. The information is loaded from a CD and over time some information becomes obsolete; you might want to update your maps every couple years (or just get a new unit with the then current bells and whistles). And until technology improves another notch or two, your GPS will not know about construction or accidents on your route - a feature that could be available in future units. As mentioned by others, take time to become familiar with a GPS prior to needing it in an unfamiliar area. Remember safe driving takes precedence over everything else. If you've not used a GPS before, plan on spending at least an hour becoming acquainted with it's features and functionality before trying to use it for actual navigation. There are several additional benefits of using a GPS in familiar territory: Frequently you have to go between 2 points where you're not sure about the theoretically fastest/shortest way - the GPS can suggest routes and show you on the map. Sometimes there's unexpected traffic or construction, you can quickly determine if side streets look like they'll work - I've avoided driving down "no-outlet" areas many times by a quick look on the GPS. You can look up nearby stores, restaurants, etc.; I've found this especially useful for location Post Offices when I'm in an unfamiliar area. Anyone who uses these gets hooked; I take mine with me when I need to drive out of town too.
Rating:
Summary: Great tool, but not perfect!
Review: Over the past 6 months I've been very impressed with my Garmin, it typically does an excellent job of getting you to where you need to go. Once you get used to following it's directions using it's time estimates (forget using distance unless you are a human distance finder), you should have no trouble staying on course. However, that said, if you do miss a turn, and for some reason it needs to re-calculate be prepared to wait, especially if you have a trip over 100 miles that's mildly complex. While typically this isn't that big a deal, as the system will always find a way to get you back on track (even if it's a U-Turn), it can be a little frustrating when you are now on a highway that doesn't have an exit ramp for 15 miles...woops... The only other issue I've encountered is that it's not always 100% clear wether or not you are on internal batteries (6 non-rechargable double As) or on your car battery. If for example you find that you haven't plugged the system all the way in, and after you've been driving a while the 6AAs go dead you've basically just lost your map and directions (can be a little bit suprising). At anyrate, dispite those things the system works great at finding places, especially if you are unfamilar with an area. Bottom line I would recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: You're insane to NOT buy this!
Review: An amazingly effective compromise between the more expensive dealer or aftermarket built-in navigation system and the freedom of a portable. This Garmin Streetpilot offers a great deal of power with only a few sacrifices. The package includes a 128 MB data card and USB programmer. To load maps onto the card, fire up the included mapping software, Garmin MapSource, select the areas and download them. It's just that easy and very quick. This downloads all the low-level map details as well as attractions like shopping, theaters, and restaurants. Because there's not a permanent CD option, the first compromise that you make is you can't take all of North America with you when you drive. I was able to select all of Virginia, Maryland and DC and download it to the data card. I'll have to load all the Bay Area maps or my other locales when I hit the road. The cabling is simple, but it's kind of messy. The kit includes a power cable that connects to the car cigarette lighter. The cable is where the speaker is, so if you want turn-by-turn guidance, you'll need a cigarette lighter! The power cord connects to both sides of the GPS: one for power, located at the top and the other for the speaker, which is a mini DIN headphone jack. According to the manual, you can connect this to any non-powered speaker that's under 8 watts. The system is very easy to use, and the included features are very similar to the Hertz Neverlost system. You can enter an address and have it route using less distance or less time. Just to try it out, I had it navigate me from my car dealership to home - about 50 miles. It took me through neighborhoods I didn't even know about - but the directions were exactly correct. The GPS accuracy, however, can be off by about 100 feet. So, in areas where you have a series of turns that are close together, this unit may confuse and frustrate you. Sometimes, the navigation is a little too ambiguous. It will tell you things like "In 100 feet keep to the right and then keep to the right" Sounds good - until you realize it's a split ramp and it actually meant for you to go straight. It will reroute you, though. That's a blessing for guys like me who are forever lost and will not stop and ask for directions. The package does not include a carry case, so you're going to have to get one on your own. The cables are kind of messy, so once you have it figured out for your car, you'll probably want to get some computer cable wraps to clean up the clutter. The screen visibility is excellent and the map detail is wonderful. I really enjoy using this GPS system, which was an upgrade from my less successful handheld GPS that used a PocketPC and a smaller antenna. You definitely will want to order the mobile antenna. It does wonders for the accuracy of the GPS plotting, and it takes up very little room when you put the whole kit in a bag to take along. Do not leave this GPS unattended in your car, for any reason. It begs to be stolen.
Rating:
Summary: Stop complaining, this thing works well!
Review: Not only does this thing work as billed, the customer service with Garmin is excellent. I've had the GPS III+ for years, this is the grown-up version of that unit. Great display, great functionality, great people at the office... stop the presses, just BUY IT!
Rating:
Summary: I recommend this unit
Review: I've owned my unit for about 5 months and love it. It's one of the few pieces of electronic equipment that has passed my wife's "waste of money" test. I bought the deluxe package to get access to all of the US, and have the portable bean-bag mount. We frequently trade which car gets the unit based on the day's plans. I routinely use the unit to go to and from work, and hit the "detour" button when traffic gets bogged down. Thanks to this unit I have found some lightly traveled trails during rush hour. The unit offers shortest-distance or quickest-time to calculate routes. There are options available for how much time the unit calculates each permutation. For those concerned about recalculation speed, such as in a city, try setting this parameter to least optimum and thus fasted calculation time. The shortest distance route will sometimes take you down dirt roads and trails. I drive an Explorer so find this fun. I'd be less impressed if I drove a low-slung sportster. Thanks to this idiosyncrasy I found a quick detour when a rural bridge on my commute was closed for repairs. It's also helped me find spots for fishing when spring arrives. The screen is easy to see, even in sunlight and while wearing polarized sunglasses. I always use the cigarette lighter for power as the unit is known for eating batteries. The 128m memory card is plenty for storing the maps I need for my local region. I intend to buy a second card so I can have "home" maps and "road trip" maps without having to spend the time reloading home maps after a trip.
Rating:
Summary: Works better than advertised
Review: I've had the Deluxe for about 3 weeks now. It has exceeded my expectations. I read reviews about delays in recalculation and was expecting some spotty results when going off route. I have seen none of that. Whenever I have gone off route it has recalculated quickly and with accuracy. Note: I've only used this so far in Florida. I am more than pleased with this unit. What I really like is the portability of being able to use it in both our cars and take it with you for rental car use. Before I purchased it I was concerned about the size of the display screen and how stable it would be on the dash. No problem in either case. The unit locked into the bean bag holder is remarkably stable and unobtrusive. The display screen is quite comfortable to view. There is no eye strain. The back lit display on full is bright and vivid. While in the car you should use the external power source included so battery life is not an issue. The only weak negative I have and this has nothing to do with the GPS unit but rather the database from map source is that some info on resturants, shopping etc is outdated. However, that is to be expected since resturants and stores come and go. Two thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Best external street routing GPS money can buy....
Review: This GPS is wonderful. I bought it when it first came out and was very impressed. That just got stolen and insurance is paying to have it replaced. This deluxe package is great. 128 MB, FREE unlock, BOTH mounts, and FREE updated software...great deal...and for the same price I paid for less! The updated software has even more points of interest categories such as movie theaters. These jokers complain about it recalculating a route if you go off of it... this is you can choose for it to do it automatically or not. There are options for you to go the shortest or fastest routes (the joker who said it saved 50 feet probably had it set for SHORTEST route, not FASTEST). You can also tell it to avoid types of roads such as highways, toll roads, etc. I recalculated a route to avoid highways when the highway I was on was a parking lot and it took me off at the next exit and got me around the traffic. I recommend the external antenna. It is discrete. Thanks Garmin for making a great product.
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