Help finding a good GPS system for the car

As the topic says I am looking at buying a GPS system for my car. I really have no idea about them as my family doesnt even own one. Just from looking at ones friends and familys have I know somewhat of what I want in one.

In a GPS i would like:

Text to speech
User friendly
Free map upgrades

The last one I put was because we had a family friend that bought a pretty expensive Garmin and then Garmin wanted $99.99 for new map upgrades. Do all GPS companies do this? Also I know GPS are still fairly expensive. I am not looking at spending a fortune but if its worth it then I will. Basically want this as me and my friends this summer are making trips to theme parks and once they go away for college I want to go and visit them. If anyone owns a good GPS system or knows of one then please let me know. Thanks

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Noob

I don't know how much into cars you are but if you are looking into ugprading your car's deck, you can have everything in one if you get a Pioneer Avic-D3x. There are higher end models too but the D3X is probably the best bang for the buck.

Other than that, have you looked into TomTom?

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Spike

Its looks really nice but $750 dollars is a lot of money to put into my 1997 Buick Skylark. I am looking at a portable one. I have seen commercials for the TomToms. Do you have any experience with them? I just dont want to get it and have the maps be outdated and I would have to pay to update them. I will prob go with an older model to save money.

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Noob

Sorry but I don't have any experiences with hand held GPS's other than my phone (N95).

I live in Hawaii afterall haha. I know all the bumps on this rock.

Hopefully someone else can chime in on the handheld stuff.

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Spike

I've got one of the low end Tom Tom's (a Tom Tom One), and I really like it. It doesn't have text to speech (so that it can read any street name for example), but it has a good voice bank of commands

I'm not aware of any GPS unit that comes with free map upgrades, but if you find one then do let me know My older Garmin unit is about 5 years old now, and only once did I have a problem with outdated maps when a street had become one-way in a city centre. I just followed the signs for a bit and the GPS re-calculated.

Do you know how much TomTom charges for map upgrades?

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Noob

We have a Tom Tom. I haven't played with it much, it's in the wife's car. It works really well though. Awesome maps. Fast recalculation of route. I'm not sure how the updating works, haven't looked into it. Does connect to the PC though and comes with a USB cable.

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Hello, World!

Text to Speech really isn't necessary to be honest, our garmin says "turn right in 50'", turn right in 6', etc.

As far as I know all GPS units charge for the annual map updates but you can usually go every other year on the upgrades. With Garmin you can update the point of interest updates for free which are updated frequently.

Check out this unit, it's an excellent deal: http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-200W-4-...1832546&sr=8-2

The Garmin 260 (I believe) has text-speach.

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I thought text to speech meant it would say things like "turn right in 50" Lol. Now that I think of it I seem stupid. My friend who is my age has a TomTom and now that I think of it that is what it does.

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Noob

What did you end up purchasing?

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