Dij said:
My Garmin 2610 tells me the distance and the direction. [snip] I didn't think I had much use for the nav, but I love the Garmin.
Hey Dij,
Are you saying you hear which way to go on an upcoming interstate, or when you say "tells", do you mean "shows"? I used my Garmin Streetpilot III Color for a year or so before getting the Mo, and I loved it, too. I definitely miss some features from it -- in particular: the live updates of targets (waypoints, points of interest, whatever list you're looking at) as you're driving along. I was so hoping the Murano gained that feature in this year's update, but alas, no such luck. I also loved the web-based update feature. Free downloads of patches every few months? Can't beat it. NMEA serial out. Required for wardriving. Can't do it in the Murano, but my cellphone can in the meantime. Best of all, she's portable! I bring her along for trips when I'll have a rental car.
On the other hand, the Murano's nav lowers the radio to talk, lets us set "avoid areas" to stay away from when setting up routes (and warns me when I'm heading directly for a programmed "avoid area"), shows a bird's eye view, which is 1000x better than the Garmin, and will let me drive across the country without changing or reprogramming any chips. I've been burned by needing to go to Connecticut after coming home from Florida and forgetting to reprogram "Gwen" (my Garmin). Also, I was once in a park outside Philly and my sister called from Los Angeles needing directions. I jumped in the car and used the nav to help her get on her way. Couldn't do that with Gwen unless I kept the LA area loaded up in her chip.
More than just about anything, I wanted the built-in Nav so I could let my wife start using Gwen. (You know, "share the love") Until she actually wants to use it, Gwen will serve as my stratum-1 ntp server (for the geeks in here). Seriously, I loved Gwen for many reasons, but Nancy has a lot going for her, too.