New Garmin Models With Traffic :)

[+wickedsprint]

http://www.garmin.com/whatsNew/

 

The new qwest has detail maps for the entire USA plus 140mb to use for topo or other maps, not really needed for city select since it is all pre-loaded, and the new street pilot has the ability to intercept traffic and weather signals, and then color codes the map for congested areas and whatnot. They also have a mini streetpilot that is the size of a baseball.

Edited July 16, 2005 by wickedsprint

[+IVxIV]

..another new Garmin that doesn't accept memory cards..

[+wickedsprint]

Why need a memory card if it has city select already loaded for the entire country?

, 140mb should cover alot of topo maps.

[+Right Wing Wacko]

The Battery is still the weak point of the Quest, not the Memory. It's pretty much useless for hiking.

[yeeoldcacher]

That's probably why the unit is marketed as an automotive unit.

[vr12]

It is automotive unit

[+wickedsprint]

Still kinda neat, if the qwest had aa batteries I'd get one for the bike.

[+-=(GEO)=-]

Still kinda neat, if the qwest had aa batteries I'd get one for the bike.

 

The battery of the Quest lasts for 20 hours. I don't know about you, but that's way more than I'm willing to ride my bike

[+Blind Avocado]

MSRP is $750.00! I wonder what the street price will be?

[+wickedsprint]

Still kinda neat, if the qwest had aa batteries I'd get one for the bike.

 

The battery of the Quest lasts for 20 hours. I don't know about you, but that's way more than I'm willing to ride my bike

Yeah, but rechargables degrade over time, I don't really trust them, I guess I could be un-lazy and wire in a power source. I'm sure there is a switched 12v somewhere under all that friggin bodywork, or just go fused off the battery.

[+Shifty]

The upgrade for the 2620 is the 2720, it will have traffic reporting capabilities, 3d routing, and also come with City Nav 7. msrp is around 1150$ and is due to be out the end of July/August.

[+wickedsprint]

wonder if it uses the same disk drive, or a ton of internal memory like the 2610.

[tossedsalad]

wonder if it uses the same disk drive, or a ton of internal memory like the 2610.

You can get 512 MB of Flash on a single chip, so I can't see needing a hard drive for this much storage.

 

Marketing sets the prices and not the engineering. I have always wondered just how much the unit production cost is for these very high end units. I can buy a 12 channel GPSr front end as a module (all the RF, demod, and processing) which provides the current location for around $50. The rest of these units are the case (rugged and waterproof for hiking) and the remaining electronics which is roughly equivalent to a Palm. So in theory, they should be able to sell any of these units for around $300 tops. The rest is whatever it costs for the software development (a bit more than for a Palm) and differences in channel distribution which is getting to be more like other consumer products now that they are sold in Target and BestBuy.

 

So even if you add $100 for the extra software costs, I should be able to buy a top end unit for well under $500. The only real difference between a top end $1000 unit and the $70 iFinder Go is the amount of memory (pretty cheap), the display (not *as* cheap but still cheap) and the software (amortized over as many units as they sell). I wonder when even the high end units will be selling for under $400 at Walmart or every Corolla will come with one?