GPS REVIEW - CUSTOMER

This morning on the way to my local bakery, I came upon a stop light that would not change.  It was red (against me) and after waiting for five minutes I cautiously made a left turn against the red light.  Then I had a thought:  I paged 'BACK' to the 'WHERE TO' command, selected 'SPELL' and typed in 'POLICE'.  My Nuvi promptly displayed every local police station, closest first.  When I selected one it showed the phone number.  I called them and reported the malfunctioning red light.  Then I had another thought:  If in trouble, selecting 'GO' on that page would have guided me to the police station.

We all go on road trips from time to time, and a navigational aid is great to have.  But my most frequent use is when I'm in my own city, going to familiar places, but because of bad weather and/or night conditions I can't read the street-signs ...!!  Without even setting it to route to an address, it displays all the cross-streets, even at night or during a blizzard, or when the street-signs are actually missing. 

This last one ... I don't even believe myself.  I live in a condominium where 60% of the parking is under the green park area surrounding it.  So above me when I approach my parking spot I have 8 inches of reinforced concrete and above that twelve inches of granular-B and above that six inches of clay-loam and then ... grass.  Yet I retain a satellite lock (with greatly reduced signal-strength) and I don't lose it until I pass under the condominium building.  While approaching my spot I turn through ¾ of a circle, and my Nuvi shows these changes in direction.  So it is NOT intelligent suspension as when you pass through a tunnel.

Is it a 'toy' or a valuable asset?  The satellite network is compelling technology, costing many billions of dollars to implement.  Yet I get the use of it, at no direct cost.  Equally impressive is the equivalent of thousands of Perly's Guides plus inter-city maps all over America, collected, scaled, compressed and delivered on this tiny device.  And the icing on the cake is the text-to-speech and the 3-D (perspective) route display which makes it easy to see on a 3.5" screen.  So it's an asset way more valuable than the purchase price.  But, as I admitted to my wife, it sure is a great toy.

nuvi 350