in car navigator

Hi John.

If all you need is main road (i.e. not bush track) navigation, I would highly recommend a TomTom (with voice navigation).
They are very easy to use and the entry level units I believe can be had for around $200 now.
They are the top selling unit in Europe (presumably for a reason) and I have had no trouble with mine in over 2 years now - use it in Sydney and Perth when I travel there and it even helps me to avoid the toll roads!.

Cheers

Steve

I have the Garmin 5000 Nuvi, and it works great, came down through Sydney from the central coast yesterday, no problems getting into the right lane. I turn the voice off and just glance at it. With the 5" screen its easy to read.

I use a Tom-tom one xl which is not the official "lane" version - eg 730 etc... (but its cheaper) and its fine on the motorways around sydney, while it doesn't say exactly what lane it does tell you "keep left/right" which works fine i find. Just remember not to panic if you miss an exit, just cruise along and take the next one. There are a couple of caveats with the tom-tom, first if you get of the beaten track and mistakenly choose "shortest route" don't complain if you get sent down lanes barely wide enough for a mini! (Its just doing what its told!) Secondly, don't waste money on the traffic feature, while technically it works it only ever tells you the obvious and usually 10 mins to late. Third on the hit list it has "opportunities for improvement" when navigating of the beaten track in the countryside - if you are planning leaving the main roads you really need a topo gps with 250k + hema maps and ozie or equiv. This type of gps is made for city slickers. There's one other quirk about the tt, the gps receiver chip can loose its ability to gain and hold a good satellite lock if the "quick fix file" (ephemeris data) gets to far out of date. The file needs to be downloaded from the internet and installed regularly/ at least fortnightly, you can probably survive a month or two without an update but after a couple of months it gets a serious case of the attitude "you don't want to give me my quick fix I won't give you your location....." Seriously with the tt you need access to the internet every coupla weeks to update it to get decent performance, funnily my 7" HK special gps has no update files and works fine - but it is a claimed sirf3 chip. When it has its updates it works remarkably well, something I really like about it is that once you get use to the street display its really easy to read on the run - there's a bright green arrow on the screen showing your route and next turn and you just drive. If you miss a turn it recalculates quick enough to catch the next and with the screen sun shield you can see the display ok. If mine was stolen I would buy a tt again because even though it has foibles, once you understand them it works really well. One other good thing support has an australian office with an australian person ! (Bus. hours) try and get support for your navman.... Interestingly a number of reviewers recommend the "one" version which they say for $217 (hunt the web-ryda( is a steal - you get all the features of the bigger brother just a smaller screen which by all reports is fine.
C.

I have had my TomTom One XL for just on two years. I like the FREE updates and corrections which are download weekly, and you can upload changes as well via their MapShare Corrections, and only have to get new maps when there are major changes. I also like the fact it is compatible with both my Apple Mac and WinVista laptop for managing the Tom Tom - eg. for adding Macca's, KFC's, National Parks, designing routes etc.

Gavin

Never used one. I am an old fashioned young bloke that reckons it is a waste of money & talent.
The first city I ever drove in was London. At 5pm on a wet Friday afternoon at the tender age of 22 I picked up a van in North London on my own & headed up the M1. Navigating & driving.
I drove around GB as well as Western & a bit of Eastern Europe for over 12 months.
Then it was off to Africa to travel over quite a bit of Egypt then hitch-hike around Kenya, Uganda, Zaire & Tanzania. All this without a GPS navigation system.
No body had one back then in 83. They hadn't even been invented & if they had I still wouldn't of had one.
My theory is that they limit the development of your own talent's & make you subservient to an electronic gadget.
In my travels around Africa I came to the conclusion that travel guides inhibited the travel experience by limiting your ability to source information for yourself. Too much emphasis is placed on the readings from the book instead of reaching out & meeting fellow travellers & sharing experiences & information. The same could probably be said of TVs in the caravan parks these days. That is something else I will never take on holidays.
This year we drove into Adelaide & found our way to West Beach without even having a map in the car. The only other time I have been to West Beach was for 5 days 10 years ago.
At 20 years of age a mate & I drove from Cairns to Perth with no more than a map of the national highways when we left. We bought a map of Sydney & of Melbourne when we arrived in these towns.
You don't need an "in car navigation system". You already have an "in brain navigation system". You just gotta exercise it & it will work well. You will also be able to say " I found it OK" & not have to say "we had to rely on Tom Tom".
Another weird sounding thing that most people wouldn't understand was when I teamed up with 5 others backpackers in Tanzania & rented a 4 x 4 & guide to travel the Tanzanian game parks, one of my companions never took a camera. He was an Aussie doctor that had worked in South Africa for 7 years & had travelled all the game parks below the equator. He kept saying that this trip was his best out of all of them. He put that down to not having a camera for the first time. He claimed the camera was a distraction from the sight before you & the taking of a photo took precedence over admiring the view.
I think he was right.