I know that I’ve spoken about it in the past. I’ve gone through a ton of reasons why I don’t need one, why I shouldn’t get one. But I finally just bit the bullet and got it. After monitoring the Garmin nüvi 350 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator for months and reading tons of reviews, I purchase it.

I don’t know what to say. When I first opened up the package I was speechless. I just sat and stared at it for a while. Kudos goes out to Garmin for shipping the product fully charged. I don’t think I could have survived waiting for the unit to charge.

Why I Got It

I’ve been playing around with the idea for awhile, but I just kept trying to justify the purchase to myself.

  1. It’s too expensive
  2. I don’t need it
  3. I should learn my surroundings
  4. I should learn to use maps better
  5. In two weeks I’ll get fed up of it and never use it again
  6. blah blah blah

Then one day, I just said screw it. I found it online for a reasonable price, so I just bought it and was done with it. I’ve also been looking at a few older models of Garmin’s GPS devices (c300 and c500 series), but I changed my mind and just went for the best I could afford. Since I’ve never had an experience with these devices in the past and since I damn sure won’t be upgrading to another newer/better model anytime soon, I just decided to go top of the line (for my dollar this is). The Garmin nuvi 350 has got a better antenna than the other models, and is smaller and more compact (about the size of a large deck of playing cards).

Why I I Love It

I mean, come on, it’s a gadget and I love gadgets. I’ve wanted one of these things for years. From the time I’ve started driving in Texas, I’ve wanted nothing more.

But this thing is great. It can pretty much pinpoint where I am at any given time. It takes about two (2) or three (3) minutes to acquire the satellites from a cold start, which is about the time it takes from me walk out my door with it and hook it up in the car. Oh no, I don’t leave this baby in the car at night, never that.

It speaks the name of the street you need to turn on when you need it. It took me some time to stop looking for the street before I was alerted. In short, it’s great.

There are Points of Interest that range from shopping, gas stations, nightlife, etc. But what really love is the recalculation. But a few weeks ago is when I really fell in love. I was on my way to meet a friend on Friday night. I punched in the address and started on my way. About half way there, I was instructed to take a turn and ride for about 2 miles. After two blocks, I saw a big detour sign.

At first I started to panic; it was my first trip with my new baby. Then she whispered some sweet, sultry words in my ear: “Recalculating”. I can’t begin to tell you how I felt. If I wasn’t late I would have pulled over, hugged her, and kissed her.

What Other People Bitch About

After reading tons of reviews, I was a bit skeptical about this purchase. The thing is, no matter how good something is, some people always have some negativity. I’m not sure what they expect from for a reasonable price, but here goes:

It takes to long to acquire the satellites

Now, this is what I was really worried about. Because I travel (well no I don’t, but I would be traveling) down in the Dallas area; tall buildings and such. So I was worried. I was also worried about the flip side: wide open areas. Now, I’ll have to tell you, on both ends, I’ve only ever seen this thing drop one bar. So losing a signal isn’t an issue for me.

The only problem that people would have is on initial start up. Now, that’s two minutes. If you can’t either get started on your route or sit in the car for two minutes, then you don’t need a GPS, you need a teleporting device.

It took me the long way, I know a better route

Did you really shell out all those bills to have a machine tell you how to get to where you already know? As far as I remember, in the academic world is the only place that people ask questions they already know the answer to. If you know a faster route, then drive there. If your sixth sense tells you that there’s a short cut, go for it, it’s just going to recalculate anyway.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I bought this thing to use as a guide, not so that I could follow it blindly to the ends of the earth. Yeah, I used it to get to work and Walmart a few times, but only as very rough tests. These devices make calculations based on known data: distance, known streets, speed limits, etc. So if you’ve got it calibrated to get you there in the shortest time, it’s generally going to stick to main streets with fast moving traffic and avoid side streets. You can’t compare a trip where you hit every light on a main street to a trip flying down the side streets and shortcuts that you know about.

The store isn’t where it said it would be

Now this one, I’ve personally experienced this a few times. But in Garmin’s defense, Google, Live.com , Yahoo and MapQuest have all (on a number of occasions) taken me down non-existent streets. Shoot, it’s not Garmin’s fault that JC Penny doesn’t update their stupid addresses. I’ve also experienced this trying to find a company. But I should have known something was up, since it didn’t give me a street address, just a zip code.

This can be rectified by Googling the place before hand and getting and updated address (hopefully).

It’s entry for addresses out of order

Now it took me a while to figure out what the folks were yapping about. But the nuvi asks for state, city, street number, then street. Are you kidding me? This is a legitimate complaint that someone had about the product. I’m not even going to touch that one.

It asks for the full state

OK, you got me on this. I have no clue when it doesn’t accept the two letter abbreviations. So it sucks for folks in New York, but I live in Texas, so after typing TE, the auto-complete pops up, and I’m right there. Sorry. But regardless, it defaults to your current state, so you only need to worry about this when traveling somewhere else.

Conclusion

So, if you’re somewhat like me and are terrified of getting to far from your stomping grounds for fear of getting lost, then you need one of these guys. Trust me.

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