In Car GPS

[mrwinky]

Was looking for some general info on these units, we recently purchased a new 06 Santa Fe, and with our upcoming move to a small town outside of calgary. I was possible looking for a GPS unit for my SUV. I wanted to know if there exists ones that have on demand traffic reports etc, so If I need to change my route coming into the city based on traffic I can. Anyone share some insite and prices and whats good or bad out there?


Thanks in advance.


Winky Out

[Pete_Coach]

There are several good threads in this forum on GPS systems for cars.
I bought one for my daughter when she moved to Vancouver. She does not know the Vancouver area at all and every time she calls us or we talk, she thanks me repeatedly for the GPS. I got her a Garmin Street Pilot 330. It was on sale at Future Shop.
As well as very easy to use, it is portable so she sticks it in her bag when she wanders around downtown Vancouver. She recently used it to get to Seattle and is going to use it on a trip to San Jose. Uh, and it talks to you as well. My daughter likes the British woman's voice because she says it sounds so polite when it tells you to make a turn, ha ha.

[warpdrive]

Was looking for some general info on these units, we recently purchased a new 06 Santa Fe, and with our upcoming move to a small town outside of calgary. I was possible looking for a GPS unit for my SUV. I wanted to know if there exists ones that have on demand traffic reports etc, so If I need to change my route coming into the city based on traffic I can. Anyone share some insite and prices and whats good or bad out there?

Thanks in advance.


There are GPS's that support receiving TMC (Traffic Message Service) which is operational in the USA if you pay the monthly fee, but I don't think there is a provider for this in Canada yet.

As for GPS units, the leaders are Garmin, Magellan and Tom Tom, with Garmin probably having the largest market share.

I'd recommend the new Garmin C530 (http://www.gpscentral.ca/products/garmin/spc530.htm) or C550 (http://www.gpscentral.ca/products/garmin/spc550.htm) which come with everything you need and ready to use out of the box. They also have the new high sensitivity SiRF chipet that locks onto satellites better (the older ones will lose signal around tall buildings or mountain ranges) and will get a lock quickly instead of minutes.

I've been a longtime Garmin user and recommend their products

[mrwinky]

Thanks, I was looking into the traffic service, I was unable to find anywhere on Garmins site of if and when they plan to bring it to canada. I did however look at the Magellan Roadmate 6000T, I do like the features etc, and I noticed on there website, that there traffic service for Toronto is in Oct 2006 ( granted I live in Calgary) but I'm guessing that we will soon be on the list.



Winky