Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Every now and then -- make that every other now and then, because it's a rare event indeed -- a product comes along that solves a problem that has been plaguing man -- and woman -- for decades, if not centuries. In recent years, these rare breakthroughs have included Combat roach traps, which made those pesky critters a rare sight in even the most infested urban environments, and the pocket hard-drive mp3 jukeboxes enabling you to have your favorite albums with you wherever you go. Now here come the GPS navigators that make it all but impossible to get lost, not to mention the AFFORDABLE GPS navigators like this fantastic little Quest. One of the guys in my band got one of the higher priced Garmins and was raving about its accuracy. When his Garmin got him right to a place we were playing while the rest of the band circled backroads endlessly, relying on directions that said things like, "go to Smith Road", without bothering to inform you whether you were supposed to turn left or right on Smith Road or cross it -- I knew I had to have one. Better yet, he told me Garmin had a new model that did the same job for half the money. Well, it turns out that the Quest handles more than the same job the bigger units do. With its pocket size, you can also use it when you're on foot trying to find a strange address in a strange city (or in the Village, here in Manhattan). Otherwise the only downside of the Quest is that you can't add memory; the memory built in can handle enough map detail for a large state, but if you were going across country, you would need to bring your laptop with the detailed maps loaded, to download into the Quest as you passed from one region to the next. For those of us who typically travel within our state (or the so-called tri-state area around NYC), however, the Quest has more than enough memory. Does the little Quest work? It sure does! I snapped it into its cradle, it came to life (it gives you a warning about using it responsibly when you're driving), and soon it had located and then acquired the satellites it uses to track your position, altitude, direction, and speed. The voice pipes up loud and clear from a speaker hinged to the lighter plug unit, sounding rather like the computer voice on Star Trek, and you can enable or disable a chime preceding the announcement. Announcements are given in plenty of time so you can get in the proper lane, and turns are shown on screen with bright red directional arrows. If you miss a turn (and I did, not once but twice, the street was so poorly marked), the unit says "recalculating" and in a jiffy advised me to hang a uey in a quarter mile, then talked me back through my proper turn. The display is bright and legible (I can read it, and I am more than 50), and useful information shown includes your current speed (it appears my speedo has been off all these years by more than 10 mph!!!), the time to your next turn, and your estimated time of arrival, based on your progress. The windshield mount works very well, using a suction cup with a vacuum clamp, and articulated joints let you position the unit where it can see the satellites and you can see it without blocking your view of the road. The built-in swing-out antenna seems to work very well; you would only need an external antenna if you had heavily tinted windshields or an in-screen heating system blocking the satellite signals, according to the instructions. Which brings me to about the only other gripe I have about the Quest, and one for which I almost deducted a star, which is the instructions. Though the hardware and software manuals are well written, this rig cries out for a Quick Start card highlighting a few essential pieces of information, including where to find a useful tutorial on downloading maps into the Quest, which direction is now helpfully buried in an obscure Appendix at the back of one of the manuals. If you're new to GPS, as I was, expect to spend a long afternoon and evening reading and fiddling, before you get a grip on the technology. Otherwise setup all ran smoothly. And the Quest got me right to my gig; even better, with the push of one button, it got me home again that night. Now if there's anything harder than finding a place when you have bad directions, try finding your way home in the dark, attempting to reverse those same poor directions!!! With the Quest, getting home is a piece of cake. I also tried the Quest on foot, and it led me right to my friend's building in Stuyvesant Town, not an easy place to find for the uninitiated! Basically I'm telling everyone in the band to get one of these, and if you do a fair amount of driving -- and a fair amount of getting lost -- I'm telling you to get one too! This is already one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century! One addendum (written a week later): it turns out that Garmin DOES include a Quick Start card -- which they hide in a pocket behind one of the software disks, where you will probably never find it! Unfortunately, except for a chart showing shortcut commands, this card doesn't tell you the really useful stuff, like what the base maps cover compared to the detailed maps or where to find the map downloading tutorial. So my comment about the documentation holds -- if you start at the BACK of the various manuals and work forward, you might make faster progress learning the system! Nevertheless the unit works so well, you will forgive the slow learning curve the first time the tiny tyke guides you straight home from a strange place in the middle of the night... I would also like to add a comment about another reviewer's claim that the voice prompts are confusing to follow. In my experience, the voice prompts have been right on. In fact, every time I've approached a confusing intersection, or even a bend in the road, the voice pipes up with "keep [right or left] on [name of road]." Coupled with the big bright turn arrows on the screen, the voice makes it pretty clear where you're supposed to go; and if you still do make the wrong turn, the unit will re-route you in a jiffee. Again, I couldn't be more impressed with the performance of the Quest. It truly does everything the larger Garmin units do except allow for memory expansion, plus it's pocket-sized so it can help you find your way on foot in a strange city or on a hike...