GPS thoughts - Garmin and Magellan

I used an old Magellan 4040, designed for cars, in my big truck for the last 4 years. I also use my paper Atlas and my Android phone navigation. I have a Garmin Nuvi 1260T for my car. Both work well, but not perfect. Common sense rules. I seldom had to go over 800 miles from home, so coast to coast may be a little different.

 

how much do they cost?

 

Rand McNally 710, which passed away last week. Been running old school with the paper atlas, seem to have more fun looking for mom and pop truck stops instead of just looking through the list of Pilots and Flying J's on the old GPS.

 

Ive used the Rand Macnally ones, I like the software, but the hardware is not up to spec. 4 of my friends all had the speaker go out within a month of owning the 700/710 models. Mine died after a year. Im using a old Garmin trucker 465, which has a few less features, but overall is "ok" for truckers. The garmin has one thing that just really makes it shine, the Lane Assist, you will see all of the lanes in your direction and it will highlight the lanes you will need to be in miles before you get to it. Honestly overall the Rand Mcnally destroys the Garmin software, but the lane assist function makes it very worthwhile, the rand mcnally that I used just show a directional arrow and no detailed lane info. In heavy traffic/big city areas this can make things go very smooth to just grab a lane and stay in it.

A gripe about the Garmin is mine will just reboot randomly, usually during a recalculation. One good thing is the Garmin boot up time is way faster than the RM.