GPS reviews, news, tips, tricks and deals
This morning I saw that Garmin had rolled out new firmware for the nuvi 12xx, 13xx and 14xx series. I wasn’t too excited until this caught my eye:
And sure enough, you can now give feedback on POIs. In addition to providing a star rating you can also report an error and have the item removed from future searches. I wonder how long it will be before we see map/road error reporting, ala TomTom’s Map Share.
UPDATE: This model has been discontinued. For current recommendations, please refer to our auto GPS buyers guide.
The Garmin nüvi 1350T
When planning a new outdoor adventure, I usually search online for tracks that I can download to my GPS. There are two places I typically look:
The latter is actually my first choice, since it is (IMHO) the best trail database in the US. What continues to amaze me is that Garmin doesn’t seem to realize what they have. We still get maps with plenty of missing trails, and they seem to be based on ancient USGS data.
I see no reason Garmin can’t utilize their MotionBased data to build a better trail map. They could decide how many tracks they would need for a given trail, and how much error was allowed before throwing out a track. A little follow up by hand (and even this could be automated) could establish trail junctions and where they connect to the nearest road (i.e., trailheads).
UPDATE: This model has been discontinued. For current recommendations, please refer to our auto GPS buyers guide.
The Garmin nüvi 1390T
UPDATE: This model has been discontinued. For current recommendations, please refer to our auto GPS buyers guide.
The Garmin nüvi 1350
UPDATE: This model has been discontinued. For a list of current TomTom models and their features, please see our TomTom comparison chart.
The TomTom ONE 140-S
A labor of love for four years, GPS Tracklog may be going away. What began as a spare time hobby morphed into something much larger. It takes a huge amount of time and, up till now, it’s been worthwhile thanks to sales from Amazon and other advertisers. We’re not exactly living large, but at least we’ve been surviving.
We dutifully pay income tax on all revenue associated with the site, but that’s not enough for the state of NC, which wants to tax Internet sales. Normally you don’t pay sales tax on Internet purchases unless a company has a physical presence in your state, right? Well, the NC legislature is going to define website owners running ads as a physical presence for Amazon and others, just like they would if they had a warehouse or storefront here. Creative, huh?
This would allow the state to tax all Amazon purchases made by NC consumers, regardless of how they got to Amazon. You might imagine that these e-commerce companies are none too happy about this. As a matter of fact, many (including Amazon) have already ended their relationship with all NC websites to avoid it.
Which leaves us with few and unpalatable options — to move again, sell the site, completely revise our model or shut it down completely. Our GPS Deals site may be shuttered as well.
My wife made an interesting comment. If you’ve ever researched a product online, you’ve likely come across websites like ours. As the sites grow, most people turn to advertising to justify the time spent. Imagine them all going away.
One thing you can do is sign this petition. If you are a North Carolina resident, please consider calling your legislators and tell them you are opposed to the Internet tax provisions in S202. And if you think this is just an NC issue, rest assured, this is an early salvo in an attempt to tax all Internet purchases nationwide.
Thanks to everyone for four years of fun. It’s been a blast being able to test the latest gear and bring you all the news from the world of GPS. Here’s hoping we can stick around.
