USA - AUS in-car GPS?

[will-fish]

Hopefully off the US later in the year and as I'm interested in a portable in-car GPS I thought someone may have insight or recommendations about a suitable unit for US and here as well.
Can purchase here or there and using it in US would be great.
Any info appreciated on models that can load maps for different counties.
Thanks..

[Chine]

Will-fish,

My wife and I recently drove through Italy for four weeks and I elected to buy the Garmin Nuvi 310 to get me through the experience in one piece. I hired an SD card (Italy and Greece) from Johnny Appleseed to use in the unit and found it invaluable. All sorts of information including hotels, amusements etc. The great thing is that invariably you will take a wrong turn (particularly driving on the other side) and within seconds the unit has recalculated the quickest route. This an essential item to mitigate the danger of the trouble and strife undertaking the navigation.......keeps the growls down to a minimum.

We are driving Canada next and the "Nuvi" is doing the trip. You will find many reviews on the net.

Good luck

Chine

[littlejim]

I took my Magellan Marine Color over last year, bought the US land map there over the net (cheaper, but couldn't have done it we weren't staying with a friend) and if you know Magellan, I had to cut the map up into 64K bits and load it on to a memory card, this required use of the friend's computer.

Would recommend looking at the US made ones here to see which one you like, eg. if you are by yourself you don't want a tiny screen you want the biggest one available, and you probably want it to talk to you. A lot of the electronic gear made in Europe or Asia isn't necessarily cheaper in the US, but the US made stuff is. Some of the in car GPSs have a built in receiver that can get updates on road repairs and road closures, you may want to look into that on the web before you go. I was very tempted to buy one of the Tom Tom in-car GPSs which seemed to have a lot of features and a decent sized screen and price, but somehow managed to resist the urge, (the Aus$ was about US 0.68c) and stuck with the Magellan.

My wife is a good navigator so we didn't use the GPS much just the maps. Used the GPS a couple of times when we got lost trying to hand the car back with the maps back in the luggage at the hotel.

If you are travelling on the Interstate highways there is usually a tourist centre just after every state border crossing where you can get great maps and coupons for really good discounts on accommodation.

You'll get the hang of getting the correct side of the car pretty quickly, signalling turns with the wipers takes a bit longer to get rid of.

PS. Just about all of the motels/hotels have a floor with a computer(s) available for guests' use, so you can use it to download maps from places like Mapquest, and for emails, plus most of them have wifi networks either for free or for a reasonable cost, so if you have a wifi enabled laptop computer it is worth taking it with you. (I finally bought one there, but they are just as cheap to buy here.) If you have your own you don't have to wait for the in-house computer to become available.
Another PS. the US has stopped identifying hire cars because the crims target them first to pinch luggage/gifts/GPSs, all your clothes, dough and laptops. So don't take the kangaroo label for the back window, and try to get a car with a boot, so your luggage is concealed and doesn't cry out 'tourist'.