Garmin 1690T

[nmaf]

Just a quick mini review of the garmin 1690t....

We bought a garmin 1690t from costco for our trip from calgary to san franciso. it seemed like an awfully cool system, with the cell-network google searches and fuel prices and other features of the nulink system.

the google search works apart from the 6 million POI's... it's nice when you are looking for something not loaded already in your gps.

having purchased this unit in canada, some of the features aren't enabled at home, and we decided to pay the 10 dollar fee for 30 days of at&t coverage for using this service in the usa.

however... it rarely works, more often than not it times out, and asks you to retry... the garmin website has a map that shows coverage, and we have been in coverage areas for our entire trip. also, i don't know if it's because i have a canadian unit, but i haven't seen the option for fuel prices. it's a seperate option from searching for closest fuel stops.

the airport arrivals/depatures and theatre showtimes have worked great so far.

the most alarming part has been the way the unit has malfunctioned, after only a couple weeks. randomly freezing, or shutting off, or rebooting, or crashing/stalling on bootup, and don't get me started on some awfully suspect directions... it often has gotten us near our destination, but not actually to it...

the bottom line is, for 400 dollars, when i get home, this is going back to costco.

nathan