has any of you owned or used a Garmin Ique 3600? my IS didn't come with the navigation system and I didn't want to pay 2000 for it. What are your opinions on this palmpilot/navigation system that sells for about $550? I will be moving to Irvine and I am certain that I will get lost many times. I guess I wont be too bad off without it because I have a compass on my rear view mirror that comes standard on 2004 model's without the navi system. what do you guys think?

 

I bought it for 420 dollars on ebay, and I have to say that it's worth the money.

The goods:
1. Cheap
2. Comes with map of the entire USA, Major cities of Canada. And you can buy the CDs for other countries.
3. You can even walk around with it.
4. Bright, clean LCD
5. Voice guidance

The bads:
1. Small LCD. You are going to have to mount it somewhere really close.
2. Very very short battery life. You absolutely have to buy the car charger kit.
3. Very limited built-in storage (32 mb) And to cover a single state, you need around 150-200 megs. Purchase of extra flash card is a must.
4. In the dense urban areas with tall buildings, you will often lose GPS signals which can be very . frustrating when you are new to the area and only depending of the PDA. Also, if you travel a long time during the signal loss, it takes a long time to recalculate the route.
5. Takes a long time to calculate a long trip.
6. It takes forever to load the map from the computer to the PDA.
7. It is virtually impossible to search other points of interests, or change destination while driving.

 

I glad you think it's worth it, because your list of 'bads' seem pretty significant. Since it's not connected to the car's speed sensor or steering, it's 'blind' when there's no nav signal, which is a serious problem. The Lexus (and other OEM) nav systems interpolate when there's no signal, and on my Lexus at least, that works well.

If you have to buy the car charger and a big flash card, that probably adds another $100 too, and the hassle of frequent and lengthy downloads from a PC seem like a big drawback unless you only drive within a limited area.

Maybe at some point cars will be able to wirelessly transmit their own data (steering, speed) to a PDA so the units can cooperate, and maybe the PDA will be able to wirelessly and transparently download map data as needed, but until then this device seems really limited.

 

I used the PDA for the last 3 days in Collingwood and Toronto, Ontario. Visited for snowboarding.

\I think it's better than having to stop every 10 minutes or so and browsing through the map.

 

Had looked briefly at the PDA...the other was the Garmin 60C or 60CS. Thoughts?

For me it would be nice to find address locations when in town, my primary desire is to log locations for photo shoots where addresses aren't posted.

 

Hi there,

My sister has one of those in her car it's a Toyota Sequoia which does not come with Nagivation. I would ask her how she likes it and post an update.


Sheldon.

 

Hi,

I've had the Garmin iQue3600 since last August in my 99 Toyota Avalon. It's a great GPS for the price and sure beats the 2 & 3 K $ factory GPS units. Garmin has updated the OS 3 times since my purchase with online upgrades. Their customer service is fantastic. The longest trip I took using it was from Ohio to Colorado and back. Now I can't take a trip without 3600 and just love it.

I just sold the Avalon and bought an ES330 and have not yet figured out just how I will mount it.