Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First the good: The Nuvi 275T is a capable navigator that gives precise spoken instructions and seems to find good routes to specified locations. The display is nice and even readable in adverse lighting situations. The battery life could be a bit longer that one could use it on a bike or for hiking. It runs less than 4 hours, and the batteries cannot be exchanged (this also means it will die an ipod-style death in a couple of years). A great feature is that it can directly be fed with locations through Google maps, so one does not have to use the silly Garmin software anymore for this task. I summary, this is a pretty useful device. Now the bad: It says on the box that the maps are guaranteed for 60 days after purchase to make sure one has the newest data in there at the time of purchase. Logging on to Garmin however yields a mechanism that only allows to update either the US or the Europe maps, but not both. If you want both you have to pay for the other one...I would call this procedure misleading. Also: 'Lifetime updates' (of course, typically Garmin, only for the lifetime of the device, i.e. for about two years) cost $149, which, considering the current price of the device of <$220, can only be considered a joke. In summary, on the map side, this is a typical Garmin Nickeling and Diming scheme! I really hope for the moment when the iPod Touch will have a GPS receiver, and one can download Google maps on it for free. It needs to be kept in mind that map data are generally made available for free by the US and other governments, i.e. downloading the stuff onto a proprietary device should be cheaper.