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Automotive News & Views Navigation GPS Systems
1744 messages, Last post on Nov 30, 2009 at 6:46 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: ateixeira (Aug 20, 2009 7:59 am) I may need to get together with you, to help me figure this thing out. Bob
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Replying to: rsholland (Aug 20, 2009 8:01 am) Tomorrow we leave for yet another road trip to the beach. Have you been able to use the traffic feature yet? Let me borrow it for the weekend?  Just kidding about that last part. Sort of. 
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Replying to: ateixeira (Aug 20, 2009 8:04 am) As to borrowing it, let me play with it first. Once I get more comfortable with it, no problem. I'm planning on using it next Tuesday when I help move Mairen to Ocean Pines. Bob
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Replying to: rsholland (Aug 20, 2009 8:17 am) That trip to the eastern shore should be a pretty good first test, especially if you drive where it would have traffic information. It won't on the Eastern Shore, that's for sure. |
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Hi All, I purchased my first GPS back in May this year. It's really been a big help, and I really like the features it has. (Bluetooth, Photos, Videos, MP3 music, etc.) I was just wondering how others like their's and how it compares to other GPS units. Thanks
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Replying to: masterpaul1 (Aug 20, 2009 5:04 pm) Glad to hear you love it, that's all that matters! Congrats. 
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Got the chance to try out rsholland's new 1490T, which I had been really looking foward to. The big news was the giant 5" screen, enormous for a portable. First impression is a simple "WOW!", that screen really is gigantic.  I was impressed that it's actually thinner than the Nuvi 200 series, by 25% according to Garmin's web site. Also, it's not a lot heavier. We compared them side-by-side and it took a while for me to conclude it's only very slightly heavier than my 260w. Good packaging. We played with them side-by-side, and I basically concluded that everything my 260w did well, the 1490T does slightly better. Not just the size but the display quality and sharpness. The icons and text are bigger, more clear. They really made good use of the real estate. Plus the transitions between screens seem smoother. Touch the map and it zooms out, moves to the place you touched, and zooms back in, all seamlessly. Smoooth. Bob set up the Bluetooth to his phone, and he never even had to take his phone out of his pocket. We completed several test calls, and sound quality was very good, probably a little better than the speaker phone on my BlackBerry Curve 8900. We also tried the voice dialing. Press a button, say "Call Home", and sure enough, it nailed it in the first try. My BlackBerry works the same way. If you have your phone in your pocket, I can actually see some value here, which I didn't really see before. The buttons on the Nuvi are much bigger and right in front of you, already mounted. I don't have a car mount for my BlackBerry, and the buttons are small. I guess I could use voice dialing and my speakerphone, but that's still 2 small buttons I'd have to find and press, and I wonder if the mount would block some of those. Score one for Bluetooth. Since the phone worked well, we added some phone numbers to the Favorites. Only the Favorites with phone numbers show up in the phone book, which makes sense I guess. At first it only showed Home, but we realized we had to add phone numbers for them to appear. Then we added photos. The 1490T has a Micro-SD slot, which was convenient because my BlackBerry 8900 uses the same media. So we took photos with my BlackBerry, inserted the card, and Edited the Favorites to add our photos to those entries. Pretty cool - instead of just a name you can actually put a photo of the person. I was also curious to try out the FM Traffic feature, since none of my 3 GPS devices have that. It will warn you of traffic or construction along the route you take, but you can also manually preview what jams are ahead before you leave. We didn't take any trips so I wasn't able to see if it actually accounts for those delays before you leave, and sends you on an alternate route in the first place. I don't want to have to take a detour - I'd like to avoid it entirely if possible. Dislikes? When we removed the card, we lost the photo images. The Nuvi should be smart enough to copy it to the local storage if the photo is saved as a Favorite. I guess you have to copy that manually, or just buy a Micro SD card specifically for your GPS. They're cheap, so no big deal. The FM Traffic should be accounted for when calculated the route, even before you leave, if the jam is close by. In other words, I don't want to have to take a detour on that same route after I left, I'd like for it to choose a different route entirely. Thing is, I'm not sure about how the 1490T does that, so that remains to be seen. Perhaps someone with FM Traffic experience can share their experience. List price is $500 but you can get them for about $430, so it's high-end for sure, though it's the biggest screen I've ever seen and very near some OE GPS sizes. To be honest, my biggest dislike was that I didn't get to keep it.
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Tech Tuesdays: Bob Dylan -- Voice of a Generation to Become Voice of Navigation (Edmunds Daily) 
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"New York state wants to crack down on truckers who rely on satellite devices to direct them onto faster but prohibited routes and end up crashing into overpasses that are too low for their rigs." GPS Causing Truckers to Crash Into Bridges (Fox)
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Replying to: steve_ (Oct 16, 2009 7:25 am) |
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