Who is the leader in gps for affordability?

[perchmon]

I bought a garmin gpsIII plus a couple of years ago
i got it for 225 refurbished from gpsworldsupply.com.
Have not had a bit of trouble with it.
Whatever you do get one that has the download feature.
I can find a reef or hump in a lake on a map,
download it to my gps... and walk right to it.
i would not buy one without this feature
waas is good if you want to find the shotgun you dropped
overboard while looking for duck rafts on erie ...but other than that the others are just fine and
i wouldn't go the xtra for waas.

[Fishrmn]

Cabela's is selling the Lowrance Atlantis model of the I-finder for $279.  It is waas enabled, has a 2 MB internal memory, and comes loaded with an SD card (32 M I think) with 60,000 navigation aids and 10,000 points of interest.  (Like ship wrecks and stuff)  It covers the Great Lakes, and both the east and west coasts.  You can download from their map create software, and it accepts MMC cards up to 132 MB.  Since I'll probably never make it to the Great Lakes or the east coast, I'm going to get the basic I-finder at Wall Mart for $220.  

Fishrmn

[HIMO]

the garmin e-trex is a good unit and costs around 110.00. check out cabelas.com

[Fishrmn]

First off, let me say this:  I am not employed by Lowrance.

But I do like their products.  I picked up a Lowrance iFINDER at Wal-Mart in March for 146.44.  Then about a month ago, I got another one (my son in laws Christmas pesent) for $110.00.  They are GREAT units.

I've been around several Garmins, and one Magellan unit.  The Magellan didn't have a paralell reciever, so my dislike for it has to be tempered with the thought that nobody liked the units without 12 channel paralell recievers.  But the Garmins have always bugged me for two reasons.  The buttons on the side of the etrex type, and the menu on all of them.  It just doesn't seem as logical to me as the Lowrance units.  I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to read the instructions, and the Lowrance units seem to be easy enough to use without getting too complicated.  Maybe it's just me or maybe it's not.  Case in point.

I just got back from a trip to Santa Cruz Cal.  My brother in law arrainged a trip with an employee of his out on Monterey Bay for chinook salmon.  My job was to fix the captain's gps unit.  I had shown my brother in law how to use his etrex last year, so I'm the expert.  The map76 garmin was set to read degrees and 100.000ths of a degree.  This is actually more acurate than using degrees and minutes with 1,000ths of a minute (which is the way most units, and most users like), but since all of the chatter on the marine band radios about where the other boats are catching salmon is in degrees and minutes, it's almost impossible to move to the good spots when the gps won't point you in the right direction.  so I tried to change the format on the map76 for the captain.  Well, I'm not saying it was impossible, but it sure wan't as easy to do as it is on my iFINDER.

I've talked 5 people I know into iFINDERS and they all love them.  Some have got the mmc card readers and software to load the maps into their units and some of us have just left them with the 16 meg base maps that they come pre loaded with.  Another guy I work with saw my gps unit and then went out and got the etrex Vista.  He spent $500.00 before it was all said and done, and he said that he hates the buttons on the side too.  There are iFINDERS for sale on the web that have the unit, the mmc card reader, an mmc card, and the mapping software for $230.00.

My two cents worth and more.......

Fishrmn