Customer Reviews
great 
2008-07-19
The gps system works great. It is easy to navigate and find destinations. I use it mainly for long trips, but I dont use it as much as I could because sometimes I just keep driving around instead of pulling out my computer when I am in unfamilliar place. It is better than the handheld devices but a little less convenient.
laptop gps garmin 
2008-07-10
i love my laptop garmin but it seems to lose signal more then the older garmin which pluged into to the cars cig lighter outlet. all in all it is great!
GPS-18 & nRoute City Navigatior 
2008-07-06
Don't attempt to operate this system on your own while in motion!
Everybody accepts the disclaimer at the opening of the application, but you simply can't be looking at the screen while the vehicle is in motion if you are driving!!!
Other than that, it will get you where you want to go if your right seat passenger doesn't mind operating the laptop, on their lap while driving...
If you have some way to mount a laptop in an easily visible position for the driver, different story. I don't have the option of mounting the unit & don't know anybody else that does, so it's usefulness really quite limited.
Garmin GPS 18 Sensor and nRoute software 2008-06-11
We are still learning to use the sensor and software on our laptop computer in our motorhome. We have only taken one trip using the same but are very pleased with the map and spoken directions.
Better than the GPS 10 by far 2008-03-27
5th Garmin product. I had the 10 for over a year and it NEVER worked correctly. Took over 30 min to set up each time. Wonderful when and if it worked. Gave up and trashed it and purchased the 18. WOW is it great; plug and play. Less than 1 min. Out Damn Standing. Still mad at Garmin but not like before.
Garmin GPS Sensor 2008-02-08
Turn your laptop PC into a powerful street navigator with the GPS 18 - a GPS sensor bundled with nRoute and City Select software that automatically guides you with turn-by-turn directions and voice prompts to get you safely to your destination. Similar to Garmin's MapSource software, nRoute features an easy-to-use interface, making it intuitive to operate so you can focus on driving. It offers auto-routing and voice-prompting capabilities to virtually any address. The GPS 18 package also includes City Select North America map data with detailed maps of the United States and select cities in Canada. This data is fully unlocked, and map detail includes highways, interstates, business and residential roads, with turn restrictions, speed categories, and other navigation features. It also features more than five million points of interest including restaurants, lodging, attractions, shopping, emergency services, post offices, and more. The GPS 18 includes a 12 parallel channel, WAAS-enabled sensor, available with either a PC or USB connection. The receiver includes an integrated magnetic base and is less than three inches in diameter. Traveling with your laptop on business or vacation? The GPS 18 is a simple, convenient, inexpensive way to turn your PC laptop into a personal navigator to get you where you're going.
very old maps 
2008-01-12
I am returning this product, because maps must be at least 4 years old.
An update to current maps released may 2007, must be purchase at the company web site where GARMIN demanded an additional $75 dollars.
What a terrible way to do business. I would not touch any other model and am currently shopping for a TOM TOM.
Great product 2007-11-15
Works exactly as described. Very easy to setup and start using. Maps are very accurate. GPS positon while driving is very accurate with minimal lag. Works better than my Mazda RX8 OEM system at a fraction of the price. Excellent product.
nRoute software is a travesty 2007-10-27
I was very excited to purchase this product. I typically have my laptop open while my husband is driving anyway, so I saw this as a great way to get full GPS navigation capability at a fraction of the price of a standalone GPS unit.
However, the nRoute software that came with this unit is a catastrophe. Garmin has written fantastic, intuitive, usable software to run on its standalone devices - but nRoute has none of those characteristics. Use it for 5 minutes, and you will be pulling your hair out.
I write software for a living, and I'm always the person my relatives turn to when they need their computers fixed. My friends are always amazed at my ability to figure out and use complex software applications. But nRoute contains enough flaws that it becomes frustratingly unusable, even for a tech-saavy individual like me.
What is the most common thing you would want to do with a GPS navigator? Why, enter a street address and route to it. Unfortunately, this simple act is virtually impossible. To select the street, you type a portion of the street name. The software then ignores the city/state/zip code you've already entered, and displays every street in North America that looks similar. For example, I tried to do a search for "River Road". Over 50 different river roads are listed, with such useful names as "River Rd", "River Road", "River Road Rd", "River Road 1", "River Road 2", etc. The best you can do is choose one, make several mouse clicks, and then be told that there are no matches. (That street doesn't exist in that city - no matches!) So you attempt to select the next street in the list (which requires 5 mouse clicks), only to be told that there are no matches there either. Working your way through 50 different possibilities can take several minutes. After a week of use, I have NEVER been able to get the software to recognize a single street address.
If you already know the exact location you're trying to go, you can manually find the location, right-click, and choose "Route to here". But can you imagine using an interface like that, for example, in Google maps? "Here's a picture of LA ... just manually find the place you're trying to go, zoom all the way down to the street level manually, and right-click..." That's absurd, but that's what you have to do. So the only way I've been able to use this software at all is to do a preliminary search with Google Maps, visually identify where I'm going, and then manually locate that same location in nRoute. If you happen to be in your car without an internet connection, you're out of luck.
For the record, it is easier to search for a point of interest in their database. So if you know you're looking for the Hilton, you can search for potential matches, pick one, and route to it. When other people report success with this product, I imagine that they must be using it in this way. (Or perhaps the street searching algorithm works better in some cities than others?)
Of course, if you perform a search for a generalized category like "Restaurants," the user interface becomes maddening once again. It would make sense to display the results on a map, but instead they are displayed in table form. You can click on the results one at a time, and the map will zoom down to show you the intersection where that one result is located - but it zooms down so far that you can't see where it is located in the overall scheme of things. You cannot interact with the map to change the zoom level until you dismiss the table of search results. Then if you want to see where the next search result is located, you have to open the search window and restart your search from scratch. So there is no way to do something simple, like see whether a bunch of restaurants are clustered together nearby.
When you're in motion, the software gives voice prompts, like "in 0.7 miles, turn right." Unfortunately, these voice prompts are useless. It would be nice if the software could say, "turn right on Main Street" or even "turn right now." Since it does not, you need to become very talented at judging exactly how far 0.7 miles is so you know when you're supposed to turn. If you're in a city with side streets each a block apart, this is impossible. Ultimately, you MUST have a dedicated navigator in your passenger seat who is watching the map and telling you when you need to turn.
Also, the software doesn't provide any convenient way to alter the route. In my case, it wanted me to turn down a private road that had a locked gate. I obviously couldn't turn, so it would eventually recalculate the route. But every time my travels took me anywhere near that road it would give the voice prompts of "in 0.7 miles, turn left." Since the voice prompts are giving you so little information, you have to become talented at remembering where you are located so you know whether to heed or ignore the voice instruction. Wasn't that the whole purpose of having a GPS???
With the other wonderful products they create, I can't imagine why Garmin would release such a frustrating piece of software. I wonder if they intentionally distribute this terrible software in an attempt to push consumers toward a more expensive product.
Need directions? This will do it for you in a snap! 2007-10-15
We recently took a trip from the Northeast to Prince Edward Island and we took along our Garmin GPS. We bought it on the recommendation of my parents and my aunt and uncle. It truly is the best navigation system that we have used. The directions are clear and precise, the voice prompts are clear, the visibility on the computer screen is clear, and it self-adjusted if we went off the "charted" course. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for an affordable yet sophisticated system.
We loved the features associated with the GPS - find places nearby worked great for finding gas stations, specific kinds of restaurants (i.e. Italian, American, etc), and different kinds of stores.
The only drawback of this system is that you have to lug your laptop around but it is well worth the inconvenience. We saw other drivers with the smaller portable nav systems on their dashes or mounted to the front windshield and they were squinting and trying to set up their systems. We set ours up effortlessly and were able to adjust it on the fly.
Definitely do as Garmin says (and makes you click on each time you turn nRoute on), do not attempt to enter route information or make adjustments while driving. It's best to travel with a passenger who can do all that while the driver is paying attention to the road.
