Mal ,'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
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My first one was a Garmin eTrex Legend , and after seven years it still works fine, but a little over a year ago I got a Garmin nüvi 260w -- much bigger display, brighter screen, colors, sound. A good size for the car, but also just right for in your hand (geocaching, anyone?) or in your pocket.
See also the lower left corner of the windshield here.
I've got an older TomTom that badly needs some updated maps. You can set it to announce the names of roads and so on, which helps at least to remind me that turns are coming up and so on.
I recommend you not let your father download the John Cleese voice for the unit because he'll play it at you all the time. Also I recommend you remind him that when he gets to the destination he should get out of the car and come inside even if the unit doesn't tell him to.
Oh, wait, that's probably not the type of recommendations you were looking for. Still, those are the kind of warnings they won't tell you on the box.
FWIW, my Mom ended up giving me back the GPS -- it was my present to her -- because she found it more confusing when there was a voice talking to her while she was trying to drive. (She was a spritely 85 then).
(In vain I pointed out that you can turn the voice off. Ah well.)
I prefer voice, I don't want to look at maps while driving. and you never know how a CA road will be pronounced. DH and I have a gps in our phone. To see his DH put velcro on the stereing wheel and mounted it there.
I reccommend useing one to get to places where you know where you are going - so you can get used to who it works
To see his DH put velcro on the stereing wheel and mounted it there.I'm picturing it velcroed to the center of the wheel. Is it covering the horn? I hope he doesn't have an airbag. That could be dangerous. I hope I'm wrong in how I'm picturing it.
It didn't stay there very long The airbag is probbably why he didn't keep it there.
No thoughts on the best laptop for a venerable oldster?
I have so little experience with pcs, I would hate to recommend a lemon. In fact, she was saddled with a terrible Compaq for 2 years of tech woes.
I'd love to point her to something good. Anybody have a favorite?
Alas, bonny, my experience with laptops is confined to the Thinkpads we used at work years ago, and my lone iBook.
There are a lot of new-ish netbooks out there now, which are pretty stripped down, and most importantly INEXPENSIVE. Howver, it sounds like she wants a bigger screen because of vision issues, right?
I think our Garmin is a nuvi and I like it a lot. It does it's job well and we used it to drive from VA to NM.