Not willing to wait until Monday for another botched attempt, so am sending the unit back to Amazon and will wait till mid November for a refund. Meanwhile, I will purchase the item from NewEgg, where I have experienced nothing but outstanding customer service and delivery. Its a shame Amazon can't use FedEx or UPS for reliable and ethical delivery service.

I bought the 2008 North America map update from Garmin for my Garmin StreetPilot GPS in August and was never able to install it. I kept getting an error message "The product key you have entered has already been assigned to a different Garmin GPS" The 8-digit "product key code" on the sticker which came with the disc was evidently not enough to unlock the disk. After 5 calls to customer service and 4 emails they finally acknowledge that they sent me the wrong disk - it had been assigned to 3 different unlock codes, so the maps could not be unlocked and loaded onto my GPS.

After a few weeks it had to be returned to Garmin for repair. At the time I did not know but Garmin sends back a refurbished unit. So I pay for a new unit but now own a refurbished one that I could have probably paid half the price for.

Each time I called customer service, I had to wait on hold for 30-45 minutes to speak to a representative only to be told that they need to transfer me to the software division which was another 20-30 minute wait. The tech support in software has no direct line so each call took over 1 hour. When I sent a detailed email message to their customer support, I got an email telling me to call the 800 number.

The first one stopped receiving satalite signals within any acceptable time frame (started taking over 20 minutes to get the signal). The second one started repeatably freezing. With two placed side by side, however, the second could receive signals faster than the first - so that seems to be a defective unit and not a design defect.

I started using the darn thing while holding it outside the window, but even that did not work after a while. It was as if the unit was getting "more and more tired." Eventually it stopped tracking all together, so after consulting Garmin support, I did the recommended reset/update. This indeed cured the problem for a few weeks, but once again it is no longer responding.

This would be unaccepable for any other product line (imagine buying a HDTV and after one month having it replaced with a refurbished one). Garmin was not understanding or sympathetic to this inequity (afterall it si their policy - so that makes it OK). So for three months I have had two defective units (Garmin has had them for several weeks as well).

While my wife was trying to get someone on the phone from the rental company to find out where they were, I was able to find them listed in the Nuvi's database and it took us right there. The controls are fairly intuitive and it took only a few minutes of fiddling with it to gain a good working knowledge. This is a good thing, because the documentation that comes with it is pretty thin, and even the on-line manual (I hate when they do that) is not all that comprehensive.

The Nuvi 350 continued to show my motion on the map with the cursor, but the screen did not show the road. I'm not sure if it was just a temporary glitch, but if I travel that rural road again, I'll be checking the function. Also, it routed me improperly to a rural address when I tested it on that excursion, but I knew that there had not been a bridge for more than 10 years on the route it mapped out for me, so I would have hit a dead end.

I have now owned the Nuvi 350 for 7 months and consider it a waste of money, especially when one compares it with the Magellan equivalents. After the 4th month, it started taking longer and longer tracking satellites. At the beginning I was suspecting that this was caused by cloudy skies or maybe too much reflective material on my rental cars' windshields.

Navigating in San Francisco is sometimes difficult because "no turn" streets are not taken into consideration, Columbus Ave is an example. In addition, in at least one instance the directtions were flat out wrong. The dashboard mount is totally useless as the unit is difficult to affix to the permanent mount plate and then will fall off even if it felt securely affixed in the first place.

Middle of my trip, it stopped acquiring satellite. had to return the equipment. It may have been an isolated case, but I am not going to buy Nuvi again.

-While travelling straight East on a major interstate it directed me to take an exit and get on another interstate that travels North-South, although the route lines on the screen stayed correct (travelling East.) -It could not handle detours due to road construction and even when I drove far away from the route it would just direct me to make a u-Turn and go back. -When I tried to search for certain businesses, it would not display them or only displayed certain franchise locations, even when there were several closer to me (and none of the locations were new!)

Foster City Blvd turned out to be the intended exit and it was the last exit before a 10-mile toll bridge, so I ended up having to drive across the bridge, turn around and come back, paying a big toll and losing half an hour plus gas. The street it named was a small linking street, not the main drag. The unit uses a map database, not a street sign database, so you can't trust what it says to coincide with the signs.

The route it generated was seven miles longer than the one I had just used! I find the NUVI to be a stupid and narrow-minded device that has little or no back up in the form of technical assistance. Several times I called Garmin for help and was told that the wait would be over 35 minutes!

The Nuvi is just so basic and slow. Now on to the worst part. Accuracy is very poor sometimes.

Lately there have been some new streets constructed around my home and they are not listed. In order to add new things to the map I have to wait for Garmin to release a new map set, which is not often (maybe yearly?) and is about $75 last I checked. The maps it has are modern but changes to streets that are made in the last few months aren't up to date in the Nuvi and there is no way to update them.

Most of the time I am unable to get the unit to recognize the car's power source, no matter how I adjust the plug in the socket. Sometimes this isn't evident and I leave the unit on while driving and all of a sudden the battery dies because I didn't know I was on battery power. This may be due to some problem with the power sockets, I suppose, but the unit should have a battery that lasts all day anyway.

One road where I live is about 5 years old, and the TomTom did not have it. The directions were so poor that I would have preferred printing directions from Yahoo instead of using this device. I ended up returning the TomTom and getting the Garmin Nuvi 350, and I am much happier.

While they were working, they worked great and seemed to support most of the positive reviews around here. It gets the three stars for that (average of 5 and 0). I have hopes for the third and expect I was just unfortanate to receive two defective units.

While my wife was trying to get someone on the phone from the rental company to find out where they were, I was able to find them listed in the nuvi's database and it took us right there. The controls are fairly intuitive and it took only a few minutes of fiddling with it to gain a good working knowledge. This is a good thing, because the documentation that comes with it is pretty thin, and even the on-line manual (I hate when they do that) is not all that comprehensive.

The nuvi 350 continued to show my motion on the map with the cursor, but the screen did not show the road. I'm not sure if it was just a temporary glitch, but if I travel that rural road again, I'll be checking the function. Also, it routed me improperly to a rural address when I tested it on that excursion, but I knew that there had not been a bridge for more than 10 years on the route it mapped out for me, so I would have hit a dead end.

I have now owned the nuvi 350 for 7 months and consider it a waste of money, especially when one compares it with the Magellan equivalents. After the 4th month, it started taking longer and longer tracking satellites. At the beginning I was suspecting that this was caused by cloudy skies or maybe too much reflective material on my rental cars' windshields.

Middle of my trip, it stopped acquiring satellite. had to return the equipment. It may have been an isolated case, but I am not going to buy nuvi again.

The route it generated was seven miles longer than the one I had just used! I find the nuvi to be a stupid and narrow-minded device that has little or no back up in the form of technical assistance. Several times I called Garmin for help and was told that the wait would be over 35 minutes!

The nuvi is just so basic and slow. Now on to the worst part. Accuracy is very poor sometimes.

Lately there have been some new streets constructed around my home and they are not listed. In order to add new things to the map I have to wait for Garmin to release a new map set, which is not often (maybe yearly?) and is about $75 last I checked. The maps it has are modern but changes to streets that are made in the last few months aren't up to date in the nuvi and there is no way to update them.

One road where I live is about 5 years old, and the TomTom did not have it. The directions were so poor that I would have preferred printing directions from Yahoo instead of using this device. I ended up returning the TomTom and getting the Garmin nuvi 350, and I am much happier.

Today was exceedingly happy after talking to customer service. Bill, from Olathe, was everything first customer service rep was not. He couldn't help me re 2008 map I wanted to load to two nuvi's but did help me with another sticky problem.

If someone out there knows otherwise, please comment, thank you. Bottom line: the nuvi only knows what it is told and can get you to many places, just not as quickly as you would like (doesn't know roads under construction unless you upgrade), and has trouble with satellite connection at the start. I'm kindof sorry that I paid the $649.00 when it first came out, but it has been of some help in the past year or so.

The Nuvi 350 continued to show my motion on the map with the cursor, but the screen did not show the road. I'm not sure if it was just a temporary glitch, but if I travel that rural road again, I'll be checking the function. Also, it routed me improperly to a rural address when I tested it on that excursion, but I knew that there had not been a bridge for more than 10 years on the route it mapped out for me, so I would have hit a dead end.

-While travelling straight East on a major interstate it directed me to take an exit and get on another interstate that travels North-South, although the route lines on the screen stayed correct (travelling East.) -It could not handle detours due to road construction and even when I drove far away from the route it would just direct me to make a u-Turn and go back. -When I tried to search for certain businesses, it would not display them or only displayed certain franchise locations, even when there were several closer to me (and none of the locations were new!)

The route it generated was seven miles longer than the one I had just used! I find the NUVI to be a stupid and narrow-minded device that has little or no back up in the form of technical assistance. Several times I called Garmin for help and was told that the wait would be over 35 minutes!

It does have a little trouble in downtown area's with large buildings. I have used it in both NYC and Chicago and find that if I start it before I enter these areas it is ok, but if I start it downtown it takes longer to pinpoint my location as well as getting confused while navigating a bit, but if you give it time it will lock on and generate an appropriate route. This has not deterred me from giving a 5 star rating as the rest of the time it performs marveously.

It loses another for its sluggishness (takes several minutes to find satellites when first powered on), and its occasionally ambiguous user interface when you are trying to make route changes. It might be fine for open-road driving, but in the city it doesn't always react quick enough to put you in the correct lane. I wouldn't rely on it completely blind, without some general idea where you are going.

Another draw back it takes you thru "bad" neighorhoods if the route is shorter. Hope Garmin will built some "artificial intelligence" to this product :) Mount that comes with the product is useless.

I have not seen that recently. The one surprising thing that it does is every so often it tells you (verbally) that an alternate route is available, but there does not seem be be an easy way to access the alternate route. I was very surprised that Amazon would sell a product to a CA address and deliver it with the suction cup instead of the dash mount method.

Unfortunately, it does several important things wrong. First, though our house's street has three segments (and has been this way forever), two which do connect and one which doesn't because a large private property blocks the third segment, the Garmin map assumes the three street segments connect and sends me from my house directly to a dead end as the only possible route into town. Same coming back from town, only into the other segment's dead end and a loop back to it if I do a U-turn.

The Garmin seems to get confused. Also you should have a map because several times it told us to turn at a route it did not tell us north or South which made rerouting a necessity. I have dash Gps in my Dodge truck and it outperforms the Nuvi 350 "Hands Down" I think the Pocket Gps has a long way to go before it can perform what the dash mounted units offer and I will return this one and wait for more generations later.

The text to speech of the garmin sounds kinda robotic and annoying but the magellan's is sometimes low when saying certain names like cr-609. The magellan also has route exclusion which is important because you might want to avoid certain roads during rush hour. The garmin has other things that are useless like mp3 player.

Navigating in San Francisco is sometimes difficult because "no turn" streets are not taken into consideration, Columbus Ave is an example. In addition, in at least one instance the directtions were flat out wrong. The dashboard mount is totally useless as the unit is difficult to affix to the permanent mount plate and then will fall off even if it felt securely affixed in the first place.

-While travelling straight East on a major interstate it directed me to take an exit and get on another interstate that travels North-South, although the route lines on the screen stayed correct (travelling East.) -It could not handle detours due to road construction and even when I drove far away from the route it would just direct me to make a u-turn and go back. -When I tried to search for certain businesses, it would not display them or only displayed certain franchise locations, even when there were several closer to me (and none of the locations were new!)

Foster City Blvd turned out to be the intended exit and it was the last exit before a 10-mile toll bridge, so I ended up having to drive across the bridge, turn around and come back, paying a big toll and losing half an hour plus gas. The street it named was a small linking street, not the main drag. The unit uses a map database, not a street sign database, so you can't trust what it says to coincide with the signs.

We were heading back to Orlando when we made a stop in Vicksburg. We discovered that our daughters DVD player needed a new car adaptor so we plugged in Wal-Mart and followed the directions. It started by telling us to turn down a street that did not exist and when it finally routed us to the address, there was nothing but an open field on one side and a wooded area on the other.

Upon leaving the PO, it sent me back the better way but insisted I turn into my neighbors driveway across the street! I bought this to use with my travel trailor which I do not need to be misdirected at all. I sent it back the next day.

Unfortunately, it does several important things wrong. First, though our house's street has three segments (and has been this way forever), two which do connect and one which doesn't because a large private property blocks the third segment, the Garmin map assumes the three street segments connect and sends me from my house directly to a dead end as the only possible route into town. Same coming back from town, only into the other segment's dead end and a loop back to it if I do a U-turn.

The Garmin seems to get confused. Also you should have a map because several times it told us to turn at a route it did not tell us north or South which made rerouting a necessity. I have dash Gps in my Dodge truck and it outperforms the Nuvi 350 "Hands Down" I think the Pocket Gps has a long way to go before it can perform what the dash mounted units offer and I will return this one and wait for more generations later.

This is a very good help for driving but I have not tried any other GPS units. The only problem is that in bright sun you can not see the display to well. You can still hear the commands to turn.

Even when I was just walking around, if I got hungry I'd turn it on, pull up a list of restaurants in the area, touch the one on the list that sounded good, and it would direct me right to their front door. The point of interest list includes gas stations, banks, ATMs, parks, theaters, areana, police, hospital, restaurants (and it breaks them down by type if you want, ie deli, pizza, chinese, etc), and a TON more. In fact I've never been looking for a business that wasn't in the catalog.

If you think text to speech is not important, try "turn left in 500 feet" when there are TWO streets at angles to the street you are on. Do I take the hard left or the gentle left.

While my wife was trying to get someone on the phone from the rental company to find out where they were, I was able to find them listed in the Nuvi's database and it took us right there. The controls are fairly intuitive and it took only a few minutes of fiddling with it to gain a good working knowledge. This is a good thing, because the documentation that comes with it is pretty thin, and even the on-line manual (I hate when they do that) is not all that comprehensive.

The route it generated was seven miles longer than the one I had just used! I find the NUVI to be a stupid and narrow-minded device that has little or no back up in the form of technical assistance. Several times I called Garmin for help and was told that the wait would be over 35 minutes!

I used it a couple of times to get from North Will County to Southern Illinois/Indiana and just trying to get to RT 57 would have involved cutting directly through a corn field. (FYI:I did, admit that I told it to avoid tollways). I also tried to find addresses for places that weren't in the maps, not to mention that it could not extrapolate (with accuracy) where the exact address might be based on real life maps.

I still use it when I am home but find that my old "trial and error" routes are better because the Nuvi only looks at distance from A to B. I have not subscribed the the Traffic funtion so I cannot comment on that. Lastly, do not be surprised if some new destinations are not yet on the pre-loaded maps that come with the device.

Also, there is no documentation as to how to enter coordinates into the unit from the touchscreen. There is a way, but it is very difficult to find since it's not in the manual. I had been doing it from MapSource, but that was a pain and couldn't be done on the road if you get new coordinates while out and around.

I had never realized how difficult it is for some people to find their way to places and how frustrating it can be. I almost always use it connected to vehicle power so the battery was not getting exercised. One day it would not run more than 2-3 minutes on (indicated full) internal battery power.

It does have a little trouble in downtown area's with large buildings. I have used it in both NYC and Chicago and find that if I start it before I enter these areas it is ok, but if I start it downtown it takes longer to pinpoint my location as well as getting confused while navigating a bit, but if you give it time it will lock on and generate an appropriate route. This has not deterred me from giving a 5 star rating as the rest of the time it performs marveously.

It loses another for its sluggishness (takes several minutes to find satellites when first powered on), and its occasionally ambiguous user interface when you are trying to make route changes. It might be fine for open-road driving, but in the city it doesn't always react quick enough to put you in the correct lane. I wouldn't rely on it completely blind, without some general idea where you are going.

I'm a real estate agent, so I plan to also use it for work to find difficult addresses. The adjustable volume level is pretty good, but could be just a little louder on the highest setting to make it easier to hear when there's a lot of road and tire noise. Speaker is limited by it's small size, and the speaker is on the back of the unit, facing away from you.

she recently was able to find her way around a local traffic problem with the help of her garmin, find her way easily to and from several locations new to her and will never again waste her time trying to locate anything anywhere.

One road where I live is about 5 years old, and the TomTom did not have it. The directions were so poor that I would have preferred printing directions from Yahoo instead of using this device. I ended up returning the TomTom and getting the Garmin Nuvi 350, and I am much happier.

-Homes that were built two years prior to me purchasing this unit were not in the map system, and it often could not locate apartment units in buildings that are 20+ years old. -Redirected/reconstructed roads and highway onramps completed well before I purchased the unit were not mapped correctly. -Once I was following its directions (without looking at the screen) and as I arrived at my destination I realized it had directed me to "1"--that's it--that was the complete address it had sent me to which happened to be a parking lot on the side of the highway about one mile from my actual destination.

now, my husband and i dont get into arguments about him not wanting to stop and ask for directions cause we are never lost. the only thing i would change if i could would be the volume when its going to give you a direction, sometimes we are listening to music and we miss the begining of the direction because it is not loud enough. but i would not want to be without it to travel.

We were heading back to Orlando when we made a stop in Vicksburg. We discovered that our daughters DVD player needed a new car adaptor so we plugged in Wal-Mart and followed the directions. It started by telling us to turn down a street that did not exist and when it finally routed us to the address, there was nothing but an open field on one side and a wooded area on the other.

For example, switching from map view to text directions or changing the volume of the speaker. If you pull the car over and fiddle with it long enough you can get there, but too often you can't do it in time when you really need it. The bottom line is it's great when it works right but it is unreliable in a number of ways.

Certain things I am good at, but directions is not one. After purchasing this wonderful item, I am now able to get and return from any location with ease.

To be fair, most of the time it was right on but you still have to use your common sense when driving in a city of that size. For example, we were trying to find an exit on Hwy 121 when the exit we were looking for was right in the middle of an interchange. There were two exits on the right within 100 yards of each other and the Hwy was splitting off into two different directions; essentially we had 4 options and we had to make a decision quickly.

It's kind of funny to hear the "Recalculating" statement by the female voice at first, but it wears off quickly. The directions were unique to us, as we've taken the drive a few times to Texas to visit family, but they still seemed like decent routes. When we go to Texas, however, it did not take us to our destination.

I am the worst when it comes to following directions.

When it came time to give directions the female voice would come over the radio and the mp3 stops. After directions are relayed the mp3 starts off right where it stopped. Very cool product.

I bought the 2008 North America map update from Garmin for my Garmin StreetPilot GPS in August and was never able to install it. I kept getting an error message "The product key you have entered has already been assigned to a different Garmin GPS" The 8-digit "product key code" on the sticker which came with the disc was evidently not enough to unlock the disk. After 5 calls to customer service and 4 emails they finally acknowledge that they sent me the wrong disk - it had been assigned to 3 different unlock codes, so the maps could not be unlocked and loaded onto my GPS.

The Nuvi 350 continued to show my motion on the map with the cursor, but the screen did not show the road. I'm not sure if it was just a temporary glitch, but if I travel that rural road again, I'll be checking the function. Also, it routed me improperly to a rural address when I tested it on that excursion, but I knew that there had not been a bridge for more than 10 years on the route it mapped out for me, so I would have hit a dead end.

Foster City Blvd turned out to be the intended exit and it was the last exit before a 10-mile toll bridge, so I ended up having to drive across the bridge, turn around and come back, paying a big toll and losing half an hour plus gas. The street it named was a small linking street, not the main drag. The unit uses a map database, not a street sign database, so you can't trust what it says to coincide with the signs.

Lately there have been some new streets constructed around my home and they are not listed. In order to add new things to the map I have to wait for Garmin to release a new map set, which is not often (maybe yearly?) and is about $75 last I checked. The maps it has are modern but changes to streets that are made in the last few months aren't up to date in the Nuvi and there is no way to update them.

-Homes that were built two years prior to me purchasing this unit were not in the map system, and it often could not locate apartment units in buildings that are 20+ years old. -Redirected/reconstructed roads and highway onramps completed well before I purchased the unit were not mapped correctly. -Once I was following its directions (without looking at the screen) and as I arrived at my destination I realized it had directed me to "1"--that's it--that was the complete address it had sent me to which happened to be a parking lot on the side of the highway about one mile from my actual destination.

Today was exceedingly happy after talking to customer service. Bill, from Olathe, was everything first customer service rep was not. He couldn't help me re 2008 map I wanted to load to two Nuvi's but did help me with another sticky problem.

I contacted Garmin and they replied that my unit has the latest map that Garmin has and they do annual releases. Too bad that I may have to pay for it when it does get updated. - There are a few instances where it kept asking me to merge on the highway from the service lane - even though I was already on the highway.

Instead of it taking me up 95 to the Parkway we went hwy 17 and around Giants stadium. I've changed the settings from quickest to shortest and back but when given too many roads choices it doesn't seem to key to the Thruways or Interstates over hwy's or surface roads. If I have to pre-map trip on Microsofts streets and trips to make sure I'm not going to be taken down a gravel road I might as well sell it on EBay.

Along with that, the map will re-draw itself depending on your speed, so you won't get a lot of side roads popping up when you're doing 65 on the interstate. The volume is decent, but if you listen to your music loud, it could get lost in the noise. There are plenty of pre-loaded destination marks that come with it, so if you're hungry while driving, just insert a way point and it will take you there, then continue on to your final point.

For example, switching from map view to text directions or changing the volume of the speaker. If you pull the car over and fiddle with it long enough you can get there, but too often you can't do it in time when you really need it. The bottom line is it's great when it works right but it is unreliable in a number of ways.

Foster City Blvd turned out to be the intended exit and it was the last exit before a 10-mile toll bridge, so I ended up having to drive across the bridge, turn around and come back, paying a big toll and losing half an hour plus gas. The street it named was a small linking street, not the main drag. The unit uses a map database, not a street sign database, so you can't trust what it says to coincide with the signs.

We were heading back to Orlando when we made a stop in Vicksburg. We discovered that our daughters DVD player needed a new car adaptor so we plugged in Wal-Mart and followed the directions. It started by telling us to turn down a street that did not exist and when it finally routed us to the address, there was nothing but an open field on one side and a wooded area on the other.

Upon leaving the PO, it sent me back the better way but insisted I turn into my neighbors driveway across the street! I bought this to use with my travel trailor which I do not need to be misdirected at all. I sent it back the next day.

If it does NOT have a street number when you call it up from it's data base it will likly get you to the street but maybe a mile off! For the most part if you give it a street number it will take you to it or if the point of interest has the street number preloaded it will work. I did put in manually my Sister in Laws address and it told me she was 1/2 mile further down the road.

Unfortunately, it does several important things wrong. First, though our house's street has three segments (and has been this way forever), two which do connect and one which doesn't because a large private property blocks the third segment, the Garmin map assumes the three street segments connect and sends me from my house directly to a dead end as the only possible route into town. Same coming back from town, only into the other segment's dead end and a loop back to it if I do a U-turn.

-Sometimes the speaking voice would read "Maple Dr." as "Maple Doctor"--weird! (and I had found the street name using search, it was not manually typed in as "Dr.") -It consistently referred to a certain highway as Highway 64 when in reality it is Highway 364 (and Hwy 64 is a different, major interstate in the same city.)

If you think text to speech is not important, try "turn left in 500 feet" when there are TWO streets at angles to the street you are on. Do I take the hard left or the gentle left.

The car power cord has failed and the battery depleted during a trip. I used it to try to go to Morristown NJ only a relatively short distance from where I was staying. It lead me to a dead in street in Matawan about 50 miles away from the real Morrison.

Sometimes it becomes so frustrating that you're already on the road and Gramin Nuvi 350 still searching the signal. - When you put it on voice mode, it wouldn't tell you the street name. It would give the direction like turn left in 0.2 mile...instead of make left on so and so street.

not only is this thing great visualy, it tells you which street to turn on. some times you dont have to look at the screen because it will tell you when to turn and remind you when your there. if you take a wrong turn the system will re calculate and give you new directions from where you made the mistake.

The Nuvi 350 continued to show my motion on the map with the cursor, but the screen did not show the road. I'm not sure if it was just a temporary glitch, but if I travel that rural road again, I'll be checking the function. Also, it routed me improperly to a rural address when I tested it on that excursion, but I knew that there had not been a bridge for more than 10 years on the route it mapped out for me, so I would have hit a dead end.

-While travelling straight East on a major interstate it directed me to take an exit and get on another interstate that travels North-South, although the route lines on the screen stayed correct (travelling East.) -It could not handle detours due to road construction and even when I drove far away from the route it would just direct me to make a u-Turn and go back. -When I tried to search for certain businesses, it would not display them or only displayed certain franchise locations, even when there were several closer to me (and none of the locations were new!)

One road where I live is about 5 years old, and the TomTom did not have it. The directions were so poor that I would have preferred printing directions from Yahoo instead of using this device. I ended up returning the TomTom and getting the Garmin Nuvi 350, and I am much happier.

Also, there is no documentation as to how to enter coordinates into the unit from the touchscreen. There is a way, but it is very difficult to find since it's not in the manual. I had been doing it from MapSource, but that was a pain and couldn't be done on the road if you get new coordinates while out and around.

Instead of it taking me up 95 to the Parkway we went hwy 17 and around Giants stadium. I've changed the settings from quickest to shortest and back but when given too many roads choices it doesn't seem to key to the Thruways or Interstates over hwy's or surface roads. If I have to pre-map trip on Microsofts streets and trips to make sure I'm not going to be taken down a gravel road I might as well sell it on EBay.

It loses another for its sluggishness (takes several minutes to find satellites when first powered on), and its occasionally ambiguous user interface when you are trying to make route changes. It might be fine for open-road driving, but in the city it doesn't always react quick enough to put you in the correct lane. I wouldn't rely on it completely blind, without some general idea where you are going.

I'm a real estate agent, so I plan to also use it for work to find difficult addresses. The adjustable volume level is pretty good, but could be just a little louder on the highest setting to make it easier to hear when there's a lot of road and tire noise. Speaker is limited by it's small size, and the speaker is on the back of the unit, facing away from you.

If it does NOT have a street number when you call it up from it's data base it will likly get you to the street but maybe a mile off! For the most part if you give it a street number it will take you to it or if the point of interest has the street number preloaded it will work. I did put in manually my Sister in Laws address and it told me she was 1/2 mile further down the road.

I have been led several times to frontage and side road destinations with the voice declaring it's success, only to find that I was a mile or miles from my intended target. Hy hubby tried to look for updated maps for our area/state, but there aren't any (at least none that are for the garmin), even at any price.

You can choose between fastest route, and shortest route. Sometimes the fastest route will circle your address (I went at least two miles longer this way) to obtain the higher speed limit road and the shortest route will take you through a neighborhood. This isn't a bad thing at all, just I guess I'd like a shortest route that doesn't take you through neighborhoods I guess.

While my wife was trying to get someone on the phone from the rental company to find out where they were, I was able to find them listed in the Nuvi's database and it took us right there. The controls are fairly intuitive and it took only a few minutes of fiddling with it to gain a good working knowledge. This is a good thing, because the documentation that comes with it is pretty thin, and even the on-line manual (I hate when they do that) is not all that comprehensive.

We were heading back to Orlando when we made a stop in Vicksburg. We discovered that our daughters DVD player needed a new car adaptor so we plugged in Wal-Mart and followed the directions. It started by telling us to turn down a street that did not exist and when it finally routed us to the address, there was nothing but an open field on one side and a wooded area on the other.

The Garmin seems to get confused. Also you should have a map because several times it told us to turn at a route it did not tell us north or South which made rerouting a necessity. I have dash Gps in my Dodge truck and it outperforms the Nuvi 350 "Hands Down" I think the Pocket Gps has a long way to go before it can perform what the dash mounted units offer and I will return this one and wait for more generations later.

It's kind of funny to hear the "Recalculating" statement by the female voice at first, but it wears off quickly. The directions were unique to us, as we've taken the drive a few times to Texas to visit family, but they still seemed like decent routes. When we go to Texas, however, it did not take us to our destination.

Minor issues- it "crashed" on us once after stopping for a break (about 10 minutes). We got back in the car, turned it on, NOTHING - no powerup, power button wouldn't work.

We got there, but not because of the GPS. Overall, I would recommend this product. It has some quirks and kinks, but it has definitely saved us a lot of hassle when trying to get from point A to point B.

We would have gotten good and lost up in Monterey, but the unit knew every back alley and byway and got us back on track. We were so stoked about it that we decided to buy a Magellan of some sort through Amazon when we got back home. Then we started looking at the NEGATIVE REVIEWS for Magellan tech support.

It has not happened since, so I don't think this is going to be an ongoing issue. Second, the routes our woman navigator (yes, I know, it's just a voice...) chooses, she becomes stubbornly attached to following. For instance, on the way out of NYC to central New Jersey at 7am from the upper west side, she wants us to go south on the west side highway to the lincoln tunnel- traffic is crawling.

Although it was very good to find the satellites on several occasions it did not know where we where and took us to the wrong location. Although I believe it had some internal problems, when it did seem to work correctly, it had a hard time correcting the route when we varied from it. I have had several other units and they immediately corrected and re routed.

The route it chooses may not be the most desirable route. From VA to WVA it routed us over the mountain rather than directly through the tunnel, but it recalculated when we went through the tunnel.

Most of the time I am unable to get the unit to recognize the car's power source, no matter how I adjust the plug in the socket. Sometimes this isn't evident and I leave the unit on while driving and all of a sudden the battery dies because I didn't know I was on battery power. This may be due to some problem with the power sockets, I suppose, but the unit should have a battery that lasts all day anyway.

It loses another for its sluggishness (takes several minutes to find satellites when first powered on), and its occasionally ambiguous user interface when you are trying to make route changes. It might be fine for open-road driving, but in the city it doesn't always react quick enough to put you in the correct lane. I wouldn't rely on it completely blind, without some general idea where you are going.

Along with that, the map will re-draw itself depending on your speed, so you won't get a lot of side roads popping up when you're doing 65 on the interstate. The volume is decent, but if you listen to your music loud, it could get lost in the noise. There are plenty of pre-loaded destination marks that come with it, so if you're hungry while driving, just insert a way point and it will take you there, then continue on to your final point.

This is a very good help for driving but I have not tried any other GPS units. The only problem is that in bright sun you can not see the display to well. You can still hear the commands to turn.

To be fair, most of the time it was right on but you still have to use your common sense when driving in a city of that size. For example, we were trying to find an exit on Hwy 121 when the exit we were looking for was right in the middle of an interchange. There were two exits on the right within 100 yards of each other and the Hwy was splitting off into two different directions; essentially we had 4 options and we had to make a decision quickly.

I turned it back on and waited and waited and waited until after almost another ten minutes, it finally acquired an image. I began driving around with it and it seemed to have a 3 MPH lag on my speedometer speed. At 50 MPH it said 47 MPH and so on.

This machine costs a lot of money and fails miserably in a rural or mountainous setting. It insists on taking the longest route possible and the mother-in-law voice has a certain grating quality that is very nasty sounding. When I have insisted on driving what I know to be the shorter route several times the voice says "recalculating" with a very impatient, almost grating sound to it as though it it somehow angry that I am not obeying its directives.

We took back the one that did not talk. The talking one (by street name) is nicer since you are warned everytime you turn it on that you shouldn't fiddle with it while you are driving.

I travel alot, I'm not very good at navigating, have a short attention span when driving, and my eyes are getting worse...

Bought this over a week back and have been test driving it everyday. As other people have commented, it locks on very fast - from a cold start to "Ready for Navigation", it takes me approximately 30-40 secs but after that its pretty smooth.