by Richard Bramante

Created on: June 13, 2008

In the past I have strongly considered buying a GPS device but did not act on it until this past spring. I was attending a birthday party when my niece told me I should buy one for my upcoming Florida trip to visit her Mom. She had convinced me that the current price for theses devices had come down, and that I should purchase one. I liked the idea of having a GPS which aid drivers to navigate by receiving positional information from satellites which are part of the Global Positioning System. I felt at that current sale price it was a worthwhile investment if only to have it for just this one trip. She recommended that I should buy the same one her husband had which was currently on sale locally.

I went to the store and being a hot sale item the store had sold out. There were other much more expensive ones, but I wanted to stay close in price to the sale price. I ended up buying a model which was not on sale and about fifty dollars more than the other model's sale price. Since my trip was in two days I purchased the higher priced model.

When I brought my purchase home, I pulled it from its package and found a very small start up manual which only described some very basic instructions for a quick start up. For a full manual, I would need to log on to the manufacturer's website. I played with the unit which has a touch screen and could make it through intuitively to program it for a destination address which is my sister's Florida home in Naples.

The GPS unit I purchased has a voice which gives navigation information without my having to constantly stare at the screen which can be dangerous while driving at highway speeds. The maps are programmed into the device and are visible on the screen showing highways, streets and roads as you navigate towards your destination. Mind you now I started my trip from Massachusetts without a road map and never having been to Naples Florida. The device acted flawlessly and I did much better than I would have time wise if I had to keep looking at road maps. I am extremely pleased with my purchase of this GPS device.

I have used the features programmed into the device to find motels and restaurants. There are also places for medical attention and emergency services, but thankfully I did not need them on this trip. The unit also comes with local attractions already preprogrammed in and can be found by type off attraction such as park, museum, etc.

A few things you may want to consider for buying your first GPS unit:

Make sure that the

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