the new toy I want

I am skilled at neither driving nor navigating. Trying to do both at the same time... tends to get me in trouble.

Having experienced both a human passenger navigating, and Crash's dashboard-mounted GPS mapping 'bot, I prefer the 'bot. Yay for the triumph of Artificial Stupidity over Natural Intelligence.

What goes wrong having a friend navigate? Well, to illustrate, I could give a blow-by-blow account of how, in the process of trying to drive to dhs's house in Maryland, I drove into a ditch in Northern Virginia instead. But that would lead to pointless on-line bickering with the navigator. So we'll just move on from that.

So now I want this.

Now to look for comparison reviews... And the best price seems to be from costco.com; do I need a Costco membership to order from them?

no more ditches

I don't know if this was the most rational decision, but I was overcome with gadget lust. So I ordered the afore-mentioned Garmin iQue 3600.

Read many on-line reviews-- apparently, it is not perfect, but on the other hand, you can use the Palm OS Address Book app to specify an address to navigate to. That just presses too many of my wow-that's-cool buttons at once.

I've probably blown my budget for electronics gear, but OTOH this delays my having to get another Palm Pilot if the one I have dies. I get use the Gamin as a replacement, if need be. Not going to use it as the primary Palm until that happens, though. The Garmin has poor battery life (not a concern as a navigation frob-- I got the car charger too) and is probably more fragile than the indestructible Palm Vx. But, good enough as a stopgap.

Toy!!!!!!!!!!