A New Toy

I do love electronic gadgets! It's a struggle resisting the urge to own one of each. However, my recent trip to San Diego got me too close to some of the latest GPS technology - NeverLost was in our Hertz rental car. Pretty cool stuff! I had purchased a small handheld Garmin GPS a few years back, but it contained only very basic maps, and was really more useful for hiking than driving. I knew after our first use of NeverLost that I was going to have to get an upgraded model for myself. It made driving in a strange town more fun than stressful. At times it almost seemed like there was an additional person in the car helping us along.

After a little research, I decided on a Garmin nuvi 350. Reviews seemed to be pretty favorable, and I especially liked that:

• it is TTS (Text to Speech) capable, so it can actually tell you the name of the road onto which it wants you to turn;
  
• it has a built-in MP3 player (Normally I hate when they cram too much stuff into one device (I still don't get camera phones), but since I like to listen to podcasts on long drives, I thought this would come in handy).
  

My nuvi arrived yesterday afternoon, and I just had to take it out on its maiden drive (a quick trip to my sister's house and back). Overall, it seems to work very well. The volume seems reasonable, the voice is mostly understandable. It did make a few strange route choices, but it still got me to where I wanted to go, and I learned a couple of new roads along the way. I think I'll keep it!