Summary: My business has me driving all over town to new locations regularly, and I have a laptop in the car, so at about $100, this unit seemed worth trying before plunking down $1000 for an in-car unit. Turned out to the best best $100 I ever spent. I've been using the unit for over a year, and haven't been tempted by any alternatives.
The nRoute software is fully-featured, and well-designed for in-car use. Voice prompts are clear and helpful, and the display scales to take advantage of the full size of the laptop screen, with upcoming street names printed in very large text. There are a variety of view and display options, some of which are better suited for driving, others are better for static use. I drive with the map automatically orienting in my direction of travel (forward is always "up"), and automatically scaling to keep the vehicle and the next turn visible together at all times- this causes an automatic zoom as you approach a turn, giving you more detail when you need it.
On my (admittedly fast) laptop, screen updates are sufficiently fast. The routing is pretty intelligent and quick- if you miss a turn, it will recalculate MUCH faster than any in-car unit I've used. I've also found the maps to be quite accurate- it was very nice that Garmin offered a complementary update to the most recent map nearly a year after I bought the unit.
Misc features:
* The maps include a huge business index- functions like "show nearest fast food" or "nearest gas station" work very well
* Thanks to the availability of a laptop harddrive, the software stores a complete record of where you have traveled, indefinitely. IF you're concerned about big brother tracking your movements, it is eraseable, but I think it's fun to see everywhere I've been.
* If you aren't actively being routed somewhere, it will display the next cross street at the top of the map.
Gripes:
I did have one major problem: after 6 or months of use, the GPS seemed to be taking longer and longer to acquire satellites. Although it took a long time to get them on the phone, Garmin tech support was excellent and made a warranty exchange easy.
I do think there are better GPSes out there with respect to keeping an accurate location lock in "noisy" settings (like downtown areas). If I plug it in for the first time when coming out of a parking garage downtown (a major city), it may not get a functional location lock for 5-10 minutes (this is typically how long it takes to clear the tall buildings). It works fine if it comes into downtown with a good lock. It has been only an occasional frustration- the lesson is "you get what you pay for".
Little gripes:
* Entering addresses should be less picky. The street number is a separate from the name, so you can't "cut and paste" addresses. The Street selection process requires typing part of the street name, which brings up a list of possible names to select. The matching is not fuzzy- mistype the name, and the list won't include what you need.
* The system's predictions of street speeds can be way off. They are based on what "kind" of street it is- residential, highway, etc... The problem is that a downtown small street may be MUCH slower than a suburban small street due to number of traffic lights, etc... The repercussion is that it sometimes will make dumb routing decisions, or the voice prompts about upcoming turns will be spaced badly.
* The voice volume can't be changed independently of the main computer volume control. This is a problem if you are also using the laptop to listen to mp3's or other audio material- the GPS voice will be MUCH LOUDER than anything else coming out of the computer.
* nRoute's directions are great for real-time navigation when you can see your position on the map, but websites like google maps and mapquest do much better for printing directions to use offline.
I realize I've spent more space on gripes here than positives, but that's the natural side-effect of using a system day-in and day-out for a year... I know I take the good parts of the system for granted, but on balance, they totally overwhelm the problems. nRoute keeps up (or surpasses) all of the for-pay mapping softare I've seen, and I enthusiastically recommend this system to anyone looking for an inexpensive, full-featured laptop-based car navigation system.
-R
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