Garmin nüvi 350 Car GPS Receiver

A thief stole my 10 year old Garmin GPS+ so I bought a Nuvi 350 recommended by Best Buy's in-store expert. Hopefully, all the stuff the theif stole less my $500 Homeowner's deductible will soften the high cost.

My first confusion came trying to get rid of the default Garmin HOME; "Toto we must be stuck in Kansas". The quick-start manual took some time to decipher my problem. Once oriented,however,I fell in love with all the improvements. No more tedious waypoints to program and I could easily see the display in the brightest sunlight. The rubber windshield mount wouldn't grab properly on my truck's curved windshield so I opted for the old GPS+ method, using Velcro mounts. The Nuvi windshield mount did work on my 1931 Dodge flat windshield glass so that is where it will stay.

Programming destinations worked great once I overcame "QWERTY keyboard dyslexia".

My first long distance out-of-state driving attempt worked flawlessly by directing me via a not-to-obvious route which avoided a one-way divided highway that would have required making a u-turn. I loved the voice directions and prompts - I hardly looked at the map, except to satisfy my curiosity. I am also learning the names of previously unknown cemeteries, ball fields, lakes, ponds and rivers that I would drive past, the detail map information is very rich.

I was just getting to trust Nuvi totally when I repeated a morning route that worked perfectly which became totally screwed up in the afternoon. The only difference was using a FOOD destination instead of a programmed address. For some unknown reason, it confused a two-way section of road for an earlier one-way stretch as the wrong way, and was trying to get get me to make u-turns at the FOOD destination's parking lot. The return trip HOME was equally confused as it would keep directing me to take a longer distance state highway route instead of the shorter local road route from whence I came, even when it recalculated, which it tried to do at every stinking intersection which was aggravating. Some further experimentation with presets may be necessary on my part or downloading updated software, which I have yet to do.

One minor glitch with the computer voice is that it literally translates, which means it can be hard to understand some names. It took me several repeated attempts to finally decipher the initial command, "HIGHLINED ROUTE" - and I still have difficulty understanding some of the female voice commands, e.g. it cannot pronounce my home street name "Tanager".

One major concern I have is with the rechargeable lithium battery lifetime. I've read reviews that state it can only replaced by the factory at a very high cost and it may need replacing in two or three years depending on usage. User replaceable batteries, e.g. in cell phones, would be preferred.

One GPS+ feature I do miss is the displayed satellite map on power up which I.D.'s all available satellites in your sky and which ones are being accessed. This missing feature satisfies any anxiety about the access time it sometimes can take.

My biggest fear is that my wife, who is electronic gadget challenged, will try this out for herself and want to use it to go on previously avoided shopping trips due to her fear of getting lost or not finding alternate routes that avoid our Interstate highway system.