I know you guys seem to be Garmin fans-does anyone on here use a Magellan?
I had a Magellan Meridian Gold for several years and sold it. It was a nice unit for its day, but the Garmin Legend C had pretty much the same features plus some additional ones I liked better in a much smaller and lighter package. I also don't care for Magellan's topo maps personally. We've discussed this here before... the Magellan maps provide names for most of the little pine barrens sand roads where the Garmin maps often just show a nameless line. But IMO, that's the only advantage to the Magellan maps. They don't show as many elevation contour lines and they also don't indicate swampy areas so well. Many of the little streams seemed missing from their maps, and the contours of larger bodies of water were very crude. I just like the way the Garmin maps look better, but that's my personal preference.
In the car, I have rented Hertz autos with the "Neverlost" GPS system in them, which is their dumbed-down version of the Magellan RoadMate. In its favor, the Magellan is very easy to use. But this is mainly because the unit doesn't
do very much. The Garmin StreetPilot is highly customizable and more like a regular GPS whereas the Magellan Roadmate is just a box that gives you directions. The Garmin StreetPilot will let you load the street maps, topo maps and other custom maps and easily toggle between them which is something I really like.
So it depends on what you're looking for I suppose. If you want something which is really easy to use for a non-technical person, then the Magellan is a good choice.
BTW, that Magellan unit looks like it might be a response to several of the newer Garmins which combine GPS and other things in the same package, like the Nuvi:
http://www.garmin.com/products/nuvi360/
Garmin calls these PTA's - "personal travel assistants". I have never used any of them myself.
