I settled on the Magellan Sportrack Map. I had seen a friend's Garmin eTrex in action and it always needed to be face up, even in a clear sky, to track properly. I have had the Sportrak in my pocket, facing down and backwards and it keeps tracking! I have saw posts on some GPS review sites that made the claim that the Sportrak may be the best consumer handheld GPS to date. They are bigger than the eTrex's by quite a bit - but it floats!

Magellan has some great rebates ending at the end of September. They have $30 off the Sportrack Map (5.5 MB) or Pro (23 MB), or $75 off the "ATV Bundle" - which includes data cable, 12 volt cable, Bicycle mount and the Topo US CD. If you find the GPS and add up all these accessories, the rebate makes this an awesome deal. I was able to secure the ATV bundle for $239, which made my cost $165 - you can hardly find the GPS for that price. If you receive the DesktoEngineer.com newsletter it will contain the information for the site where I purchased it in the "Tech Deals" section which is exclusive to the newsletter.

The Map and Pro are Mapping GPS' which means they will show a map on screen as you move. You need the software to get detailed street maps. I was under the mistaken impression that I needed the "Streets and Destinations US" CD to get the streets but it turns out that the Topo CD has all the streets too - the Streets and Destinations CD simply has many more Points of Interest for restaurants, campgrounds, etc. I chose the "Map" and not the "Pro" because it was cheaper and the ATV bundle includes the map, making it an even better deal. The amount of memory does not mean much to a new GPS user - so here's what I found. I recently loaded all the Topo Map and street data for metro Chicago and Reading, PA through Philadelphia, PA and it came pretty close to filling up my 5.5 MBs. You can upload 4 "regions" - so I could get more in by not including all the way to Reading, PA. This includes two very dense metro areas - enough for my purposes.

Now add "Advanced GPS Add-in for Mappoint" and you have a voice navigation system for cheap! If you are an Microsoft Action Pack subscriber, Mappoint is one of the programs you get with the $10,000 worth of Microsoft software for the $300 yearly subscription price. This software is VERY handy because the mapping software that must be bought for your GPS rarely allows the auto-route building that mappoint does (type in addresses, create pushpins and have it calculate the best route) and obviously you must buy a very expensive GPS to give voice directions.

Also worth noting is GPS Utility which can create waypoints and routes from Mappoint (and many other mapping software packages) data files. This utility is hand because, once again, Mappoint does a great job of building routes - automatically or by drawing them.

That's my little GPS trek - perhaps it will be of use to you!

Topic: "Just For Fun"