imho, I don't think you really need one, unless you are a travelling sales person. Usually, if you just need to get to where you go, that's what yahoo maps and google maps are for. Plus a AAA membership gives you free access to any map you really need.
The handheld GPS are frankly pretty slow to give you a dynamic routing in my opinion. If you miss a turn or so on route in city driving, the handhelds usually don't reroute quick enough to correct your mistake.
Really good ones for dynamic routing are the one that comes with the car (specifically honda's nav system). BUT, those have their own caveat. Aside from costing $1000-$3000, if you want the latest map, you often have to spend $100+ for a new dvd (unless you know how to pirate the encryption system).Some of the the newer nav systems (as the ones in lexus LS's) are hard drive based, so you have to bring it into the stealership and pay for the cost of the upgrade (arm and leg).
In san diego, the roads keep changing, so basically it's pretty useless for the newer areas. For example, in our 2005 MDX, pretty much all of 56 is not on the map, as well as all the streets around Camino Del Sur.
The best mapping solution i found was to download Yahoo Mobile or Google Maps onto a smart cell phone that has built in GPS. Because I use a company phone, it costs me nothing for wireless data access on a crackberry. And because the phone has a gps, it does a pretty decent job of allowing me to route to locations when I need it (obviously, it doesn't re-route if you miss a turn).
ironically, we probably should be able to get a free gps from garmin, but never motivated to ask. My wife use to know the ceo and worked with him when Garmin was still 20 employees in Kansas. Little benowth to her, she came here to SD for qcom because she thought didn't think she wanted to be in what she thought was hickville and didn't think that "little gps company" would really go anywhere. I guess the joke was on her 🙂
