Alright, look - before I get a bunch of emails on this, I don't support cheating companies out of the money they need to develop quality products. But if you recently bought a Garmin StreetPilot c510 or c530 and aren't quite ready to upgrade to a model with text-to-speech just yet, then today is your lucky day. This hack will upgrade your c510/c530 to include the same text-to-speech functionality found on the more expensive Garmin c550 / c580.

Continue reading "Hack of the day: Add Text-to-Speech to your Garmin c510 / c530" »

Posted by Fletch at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

According to a photo released by Britain’s Ministry of Defense, the British Royal Navy used a Garmin eTrex Legend to confirm the location of the ship where 15 British troops were taken by Iranian forces. The above photo is taken from inside a Royal Navy chopper, hovering over the scene of the incident. The latitude and longitude coordinates can be seen on the eTrex’s display, confirming the exact location of the ship – a matter of some dispute by the Iranians.

Posted by Fletch at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Jointly developed by Fujitsu and Siemens, and powered by Navigon's Mobile Navigator 6 Premium software, the Pocket LOOX N100 is an ultra portable pocket GPS that combines GPS navigation and multimedia entertainment in an ultra small, hand-held package. With a suggested retail price of $499, the N100 offers turn-by-turn GPS navigation, an audio player, photo viewer, and video playback capabilities. I put the Pocket LOOX N100 through the usual rigorous testing criteria to find out how this palm-sized GPS stacks up against the competition.

Continue reading "Review: Navigon Pocket LOOX N100, Part I" »

Posted by Fletch at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

You’ve been asking for a user forum and we heard you: the GPSmagazine user forum is finally live and ready for action. So head over to the forum and be among the first to post.

Posted by Fletch at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today brought good news for anyone whose been waiting for Garmin's highly rated nuvi GPS units to get less expensive. Garmin has announced the nuvi 200, 250, 270, and the nuvi 600, 650, and 660FM.

Continue reading "Garmin's nu nuvis: say hello to the nuvi 200, 250, 270, 600, 650, & 660FM" »

Posted by Fletch at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It's March 11th and the new Daylight Savings Time went into effect today. Your PC and cell phone no doubt auto-updated themselves are are displaying the correct time. The situation with your GPS, however, is not so simple. Here's a breakdown of each GPS, how the new DST effects it, and what you need to do to get the correct time:

Continue reading "Daylight Savings Time (DST) change and your GPS: What you need to know" »

Posted by Fletch at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Magellan, the name you know and love from the Hertz NeverLost navigation system, has officially announced its latest line-up of in-car GPS navigation devices, the Maestro series. Some details on the Maestro units were leaked a few weeks ago.

Now that’s it’s official, here are the full details:

Continue reading "Magellan officially announces Maestro 4000, 4040, and 4050" »

Posted by Fletch at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

If you're about to buy a GPS, better think twice before heading to your local Best Buy. Turns out when customers ask a sales clerk to check special pricing they saw on bestbuy.com, the company uses a fake internal "website" that looks just like the real one, but lists higher prices. The scam goes something like this:

Continue reading "Buyer Beware: Best Buy Caught Trying to Scam Customers" »

Posted by Fletch at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Rumor has it the world's largest GPS manufacturer is in talks with MediaTek's GPS chipset division. That could mean that Garmin is looking to diversify its GPS chipset suppliers. Garmin currently uses SiRF's high performance StarIII chipset. SiRF has been extremely successful in the handheld GPS market, but recently lost some ground when TomTom switched to Global Locate in their ONE GPS product.

Continue reading "Rumor Mill: Garmin to Switch from SiRF to MediaTek?" »

Posted by Fletch at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Garmin has updated their USB drivers. Version 2.2 officially supports Microsoft Vista. Grab the updated drivers HERE.

Posted by Fletch at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)