Consumer Reports on GPS Systems

[Ron]

Try Shortest some time to see the interesting routing that results, especially in areas with lots of unpaved county roads

I have used shortest a couple times to see if it would be better.  Your right you can get some pretty challanging routes even with the Garmin set for trucks.

 

[Karl]

Try Shortest some time to see the interesting routing that results, especially in areas with lots of unpaved county roads

Reminds me of the time I went to the Jack Daniel's brewery as a side trip, off the regular route. Told Mrs. Doubtfire to route me the shortest was back to my route. She did. Through town, past a couple horse farms, over a bridge almost too small for a garden tractor, and over gravel roads with tree branches hanging very low. No place to turn around, so I had to plod on at about 10 mph. for 15 or so miles. Totally my fault - she did what she was told. ;D

 

[BernieD]

Most of the time it will get you there but not always the shortest, fastest, best way, or even the most logical way.  Why sometimes it will take you clear out of your way but it may still get you there.

Ron

As I said, not always the shortest, fastest or best. However, we were in virgin territory and didn't know our way around and the Garmin got us everywhere we asked it to. Once we returned to some of the places, we were able to do a little route smoothing and shortcuts, sometimes just remembering to reset the program to car from truck or shortest instead of fastest. With all it's foibles, it worked better than any alternative for a non-native.

 

[blueblood]

I believe Navteq is the map data but the routing software is Garmin's. All the tech data I have read indicates that Navteq is the most accurate and up-to-date data. But remember, no matter which data set you have, the data is probably 1-2 yrs old by the time you see it in your GPS. I have  Navteq data in my S&T and it is very accurate compared to SA. But some data on new roads is not there. There is a new road near me that has been completed for over a year but it's not in S&T nor Copilot. It's not in Google maps either but when I overlay the aerial on the Google map the road is there in the photo.

Seems to me that if you are unhappy with Garmin's City Nav, then the place to complain is Garmin's customer service...they're the only ones who can change it.

I've checked and the problem was the use of old Navteq data i.e. I found much more recent and accurate Navteq versions elsewhere. When I contacted Navteq as to why this was so they explained that various customers purchase updates at different intervals and I think they said Garmin was annual vs quarterly or some such thing. When I contacted Garmin they said they didn't do more frequent updates because it was a complicated process to integrate with there software. I didn't buy that but that was answwer.  (My records on this are at home but I think my memory is accurate on this.)

 

[Ron]

Bernie,

I was very happy with the Garmin when they offered Metroguide instead of City Nav.  I don't recall ever having a problem with routing with metroguide and still don't except in areas where changes had been made by new developemnet.  When they came out with City Nav to me it was like they were intent on handicapping a great system. After six revisions and still nowhere close to the accuracy of Metroguide I lost all confidence in Garmin.  Garmin even went as far as to make new versions of metroguide non-routable which IMHO was to force us to use City Nav.

 

[Sunshein]

If you are a traveling RVer with that Garmin unit, there is a POI file for it in the files section at the OvernightRVParking Yahoo! group. It has 275 dump stations and will soon be updated to 360 locations. I dry camp alot and having this information is very helpful.

Jack