Appraisers' Free Forum

OK, ya'll tell me all about your GPS. I don't have one and feel completely left out. What is the best brand? What features should I look for? How much should I consider spending? (for something that is kind of unnecessary - but so was the FatMax until I bought one - now I can't live without it)

I know absolutely nothing about them - but I found out Festus has one and now I am green with envy. He really IS a high-tech redneck!! I think he spends his time positioning deer stands and fishing locations ... but I need one for a REAL reason.

I'm not sure where to start.

I have a Garmin. Paid $300 for it from Wally world, and love it. I program in where I want to go, and it takes me there. If it's somewhere that isn't yet on the map, such as a new subdivision, I simply locate the map page, and program in a street near the appropriate LL and bang. I find it every time.
I am computer illiterate, and called the destroyer by a friend of mine, as I've killed four in the last thirty days.
So, if it can survive me and do it's job, it's a good thing.
Once you get the GPS, you'll program in your comps, and it will take you to them in order of preference. I usually take a few minutes before I leave the office and enter them all, then I simply pull up the closest, and then roll from there to get them all done.

If you go to bestbuy or circuit city's website you can read through reviews. I just researched them for a Christmas present. I ended up buying a Garmin Streetpilot.

I have an older handheld unit that I bought as backup navigation when I'm flying but I'll probably run out of gas before that thing locks into a sattelite.

I have a Magellin Maestro 3140. What I like about the Magellin is that i can pre-program a route, say the subject property and 12 potential comps, at once and the unit will optimize the routing and take to each, one by one. This feature is exceedingly useful for appraisal work and I would not considering buying any GPS without it.

Also useful is is the text to speach feature. This is where the unit will say the street name of your next turn rather than "turn right in 1 mile". Even though it often mispronounces street names, it is more useful than it may appear.

My wife started a new job where she travels regionally to different locations. If it's under 5 hours she'll drive rather than put up with airports. I bought her the Garmin Nuvi last year, best little gadget I've purchased in a long time, jumped over the Disto to first place in geekdom.

When things are slow I'll chauffeur on occasion, like now, and that GPS is slick. Punch in the address and off you go. Gives you current location and ETA at all times.

We drove to Rochester a few months back, took us right to the front door of the Doctor's office(she teaches bo-tox injecting). I dropped her off, punched in Bar, uh, Restaurant, and found one about 1 mile away. While sitting there I punched in Lodging, and found a B & B right around the corner.

I would get one small enough to fit in your pocket. We had friends that took one to New York City and used it while walking the city. Also, don't leave it mounted in the car, #1 on car thief list this year. We just lay it on the dash.

Great little toy, uh, tool.

TC

I got Microsoft Street & Trips. $100.00 at Best Buy. Plugs into the lap top or notebook. So far so good. Garmin has one for $140.00 and DeLorme for $70.00.

Can copy your map, with coordinates right into you work file if you want or take it with you and it talks you through the directions.

Are there any that you can enter your points by talking to it. IAW, I want to go to 101 main st., downtown, OH. Instead of trying to type/enter that data I would like to just be able to say it.

Mio DigiWalker C230 purchased for $159 back in October. It says the street names (Text To Speech), gives you directions and will allow multiple addresses (i.e. comps) to be input, then optimizes your route. A good starter GPS, but my next one will be loaded with a wide screen, speech recognition, left or right side address pinpointing, video input (for a backup camera), MP3 player and bluetooth. Once that is available for under $300 I'm on it.

Like Ben, I bought a Garmin on Ebay for around $300. I love it, and even the wife can use it. She can't use the fancy one I've got on the boat! But, it's a plotter/GPS/sonar. Poor thing hits a button and doesn't know what she's looking at. I tried explaining Lat/Lon. But underneath, she's a blond.

One thing about all GPSsss (is there supposed to be an apostrophe in there somewhere??) they work good on getting you there, but it may not be the fastest or most direct route. Depending on traffic patterns and small local roads, you may find a better route on a map. So I still print out and carry a map of the area just to make sure Gizmo does have the best route... none of them are perfect, yet.


Oh, one more thing... I pay the $60 a year for traffic adviser. In the ATL, it has saved my arse and re-directed me more than once! It even helped me get around a wreck when we were in Orlando headed to Disney. Well worth it if you travel through any major metro areas.

M L wrote:I tried explaining Lat/Lon. But underneath, she's a blond.

Oh, one more thing... I pay the $60 a year for traffic adviser. In the ATL, it has saved my arse and re-directed me more than once! It even helped me get around a wreck when we were in Orlando headed to Disney. Well worth it if you travel through any major metro areas.

Ummmm, is your wife handy - I need to speak with her. Oh dear - I am a blonde. (and proud of it) Festus is always bragging about his fancy gadgets and it goes straight over my head. He is amazing with all that stuff. I think he tries to make me jealous with every new 'toy'.

Haven't bought one yet. I'm waiting on business to pick up. (hope I don't have to wait too long)

Garmin c320 .... works from an SD card ... the c330 and above use an internal hard drive .... I don't like the idea of the hard drive, because when it goes bad (not IF) I loose my unit until it is repaired .... if the SD card goes down, I just pop in another and away we go ...

Street level mapping ... address look up ... road warnings ... easily updatable ... I replace my long time friend, the Garmin eMap with this unit. We named her "Millie" .. and she is like family now ... she helps us get where we are going ....

My Garmin is now officially retired. I bought a TomTom One yesterday, and it is great. I was impressed with the ease of use that it has. The maps were current, and I found everything I wanted, in a relatively new S/D with no issues at all. I hadn't updated my Garmin in quite a while, and it is was still out of date, so I opted to buy a new device.
I'll try this one for a while, but the Megellan Maestro, based on Skibs comments, is not too far off in my future, as the idea of programming all my comps and such in and getting it all done in one trip is a definite lure to me.
I just need to see if they are as up to date as the TomTom. (TomTom updates from a satellite download, as near I can tell, rather than having to hook up to the computer.)

I had a Garmin nuvi, I forget the number ($750 a yr ago) but it had Bluetooth and all the bells and whistles from a year ago. Two weeks ago someone broke the window in my car and stole it. (broken window $228, GPS $750 = $978, my deductable $1,000.......it figures)

I hadn't realized how dependent I had gotten on it. I would program my destination and then forget about it and be able to concentrate on other things. Even though I know the neighborhoods I operate in it was nice to set a destination and let the GPS guide me though larger residential developments. It was also nice to know where on a long country road my subject or comps were situated so I knew when end of that road to start at. I did not have the ability to put in multiple destinations.

As someone said, it did not always give me the best route. So based on my experience I would often ignore it until I got to a specific subdidvision. It doesn't know not to take you via certain high traffic areas at certain hours when traffic is heavy. It really is a time saver though.

The blue tooth capability has its limitations. Because it recieves broadcast signals there was often static and poor connections that degraded its use.

Yesterday, I ordered a Garmin nuvi 760 from Amazon for $427 which just came out. It has all the capabilities of my former unit plus multiple destinations. The European version has voice recognition so you can simply tell it where you want to go. The Tom Tom 720 was a close runnerup in my opinion.

Once you get one you will be hooked after a couple weeks.

My old one spoke with an Australian accent which I selected from a list of desired accents. I called her "Fiona". I will miss the old girl. I wish I knew who was loving her now. I'd knock his block off.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... spx?page=1

You know it would be my luck to buy one and promptly get a ticket.

Do you enter the destinations on the computer and download to the GPS?

Something about being tracked makes me uncomfortable. I have 2 REOs today and 14 comps to drive and it sure would come in handy. It took over an hour to map all the stops and I know I'll be back tracking. I wonder how well it would work in a dinky little town in Mississippi? All the north and south streets are called 'streets' and all the east/west are called 'avenues'. Every where I turn it's 1st St. SE or SW .... 1st Ave NE or NW. I stay lost in this little town all the time. The real-i-tors intentionally give only part of the name of the street/avenue so no one else can sell the property because they can't find it.

Frederick - let me know how you like your new GPS. After reading the article I'm at a stand still again.

Rhonda,
I am lazy. I program all the streets I am going to in before I leave. One reaon I am trying to find out if I can pre-program and have it select the best route to get all done without reprogramming.
You don't program it with the computer. It has a touch screen display, so it is very user friendly.