Customer Reviews
How did I find my way without it!!! 
2008-03-03
For a mobile salesperson that would like to use it with their laptop, pda or smart phone, excellent device. Range is a bit suspect as well as the laptop software. The software for the pda or smart phone is excellent. Mutliple via point sorting available on the pda/smartphone version only.
.. 
2008-02-27
I bought two of this item for my friend. It turned out that this wasn't the right model. I returned them and get my refund in a week.No hassle.
A very and versatile little unit 2008-02-22
I never really understood why people had GPS systems in their cars. I had always thought a good map and a sense of direction were sufficient. OK, haha. The first time I drove in a REALLY big city this logic flew out the window. I bought this GPS unit with the intent of using it both in a car and while on foot. I am happy to say this unit works well in both.
The Garmin maps load nicely onto my Palm Treo's SD card (I am using a 4Gb card and the maps take up about 1.5Gb for the whole US). Lay the GPS unit either on the dashboard or clip in on the outside of a bag and orient away.
Granted, the initial signal acquisition is a bit slower than car models. Also, the responsiveness is *slightly* slower than other units (I imagine because it is still a bluetooth system). It worked pretty well for me though. One caveat, though. The voice directions, which are loud enough to hear in a car easily, will give a general direction beforehand (as in, 'in 0.1 miles, turn left and keep left') but you have to look at the PDA display to see the road information to answer the inevitable 'left on which street exactly?' question. Also, when the unit says 'turn left' it means right now. So there is some personal initiative that needs to go into using this. It ain't gonna drive you there itself.
The unit's battery life is good and the smartphone software is pretty easy to use. Where this unit shines, to me, is in its portability. Riding with someone else? No problem. Sightseeing around town? No problem. Want GPS directions that incorporate current traffic and weather information? No problem. Overall I like this unit.
Awesome GPS for PDA 2008-02-17
I bought this bluetooth GPS receiver for my HP iPAQ I just got for christmas and I absolutely love it! I looked and looked for about 2 months trying to decide which oen sounded like the best for my money, and this one is definitely it. The maps look perfect on the nice iPAQ display and it never slows down or crashes the PDA, even if I open other programs and zoom in and out of the maps or change routing information. I read a lot that this was a big problem with the Palm Tx. There were no problems using this with Vista-32bit either. It just works perfectly. Only thing sort of difficult is finding all the new software updates, but you just have to read a little. Other than that, this thing is awesome and some much more worth buying than a standalone GPS for half the price!
Mobile Bluetooth 2008-02-16
Everyone with a laptop should purchase the Mobile 10 vs. the self-contained GPS system. Using the laptop, you have a much larger screen to view the maps and you can type the addresses/routes with the keyboard...a big timesaver. You can also upload addresses from other map programs like google maps. The main problem is that the program that comes with it is not super user friendly -- it's not bad, just not great. Otherwise it's great. Apparently you can also use it with a phone or PDA, making it more portable. The unit itself is unbelievably small...it actually looks bigger in the picture but it's like half the size of a deck of cards. Also, keep in mind you need a bluetooth device to use it as there are no cables to connect it with the computer. I'd recommend it if you travel a lot with your laptop, not so much if you don't have one.
Technology Is An Amazing Thing... 2008-07-02
I have owned the GPS device 3 weeks now and love it. It will get you from point A to B even when you miss a turn. I am using the device with my T-Mobile dash. The maps are easy to read and the voice directions are a plus. Setup was a bit complicated in that the device comes with 2 programs; one program for the PC and one for your mobile phone. I don't think the directions were too concise. It took me about an hour to get everything correct, when it shouldn't have taken no more than 15 minutes. One thing that you have to be careful of is that when distance in less than 1 mile e.g. .2 miles, the voice sounds like it says 2 miles versus .2 miles, so you have to get your eye on the screen for distance. I think it's worth the cost. If you can't get a mobile phone with GPS, this is the next best thing.
Works great with Windows Mobile 6! 2008-04-22
Love the gadget! works great with my O2 Atom Life. Haven't tried it out with my Bluetooth-enabled laptop yet. Love the fact you can charge by USB, and can use a Nokia BL5C battery as replacement in case the battery dies on you. Really love it.
Great product 2008-04-14
Great product. Would recommend again. Captures satellites very quickly and battery life is very good. The included GPS car navigation software sucks hard! Almost impossible to register and setup and doesn't work well. Buy this product for the hardware NOT the software!
Garmin's Horrible Customer Service 
2008-03-26
As one of the first users of a Garmin iQue 3600, which I absolutely loved, I found this product disappointing -- and the customer service absolutely unacceptable.
The Garmin 10 GPS receiver is much smaller than I expected, which is a definite plus. In addition, it seems to be well made. The receiver came with a charger that can only be used in the car. But, it had no charger for use with AC in your home or hotel, which would be a nice, maybe even essential, addition. I had no problem with the reciever whatsoever. It connected immediately and automatically with my smartphone via bluetooth with no intervention on my part -- very nice!
However, I could NOT get the Garmin Mobile XT navigation software to work on my Palm Treo 755p Smartphone. I spent hours and hours trying to get it to work. I installed and uninstalled it multiple times, following the instructions meticulously. Each time I selected a different option to see if that would make a difference.
I sent multiple emails to Garmin's Customer Support. Garmin's response time to most of my emails was abysmal. Even worse, I have NOT received any response to my last two emails -- it has been over a week for the last one and OVER TWO WEEKS for the one before that. I find it entirely unacceptable to be ignored by any customer service organization. Ignoring your customer is truly the ultimate customer DIS-service.
In between the emails, I talked on the phone (multiple times) to one of Garmin's Customer Service Representatives, Anthony L. Anthony seemed very competent and was very pleasant to talk to. He was very patient with me, even when I began to get exasperated after we spent many hours trying various solutions. We uninstalled and reinstalled the software multiple times with Anthony guiding me every step of the way.
Eventually, Anthony sent me a link to an engineering fix that I installed over the original installation. Apparently, the fix is something that Garmin has been working on to resolve the problems that I and others have been having with the Garmin Mobile XT navigation software. Garmin needs to keep working, because the fix did NOT fix my problem.
I ended up returning the unit to Amazon (thank you Amazon for making that so easy to do) because I only had a day or two before I lost that option. I am now looking for a NON-Garmin alternative.
In the interest of full disclosure, I was frustrated from the beginning because I paid extra to have the unit shipped to me quickly for an immediate need -- and, after a month I still wasn't able to use it.
Good Product aside from spontaneous reboots of phone 
2008-03-11
When I decided to get the Palm Centro (Sprint) my choice to get a navigation device was swayed to one that can attach to a mobile phone instead of carrying around a separate device and charger. I also was not interested in paying Sprint more money a month for another service. My initial setup of the device was cumbersome. I installed the palm program files on my 4gb micro SD card, and tried to expand them, but always got an error message. I eventually ended up installing them on the device and the SD card, then updating the program files with the update on the garmin website, and it finally worked. My phone interacts with google maps, so I always have the latest business updates, and I have registered for Garmin to send the latest map updates, but they have not arrived yet. Now that it is working, I have found that it has slowed my Centro down considerably if it is working or not. This may be a limitation in the hardware, but I still have 64MB free space to use. I can live with a .5 to 1 second pause in between programs, but this garmin software has caused spontaneous reboots of my device. Mostly, it will reboot when I first start the program, or after I have completed a trip and am trying to exit the program. This is obviously a real time consuming problem when I get back in the car, and attempt to get somewhere in an unfamiliar town only to sit in the car burning gas waiting for the phone to reboot, launch the garmin software again, map my route, find a gps signal, then finally start my route. The second time this happened, I knew the general direction I needed to drive, so I drove 6t blocks, got on the freeway, and passed 3 exits before I was working again. This is a long time. I know people will blame the 300mhz phone for being "slow" and running an inferior palm OS, but if they claim it works, it should work. I will update my review if the "update" disk from Garmin helps out at all.
As far as operation and performance of the device, once it gets going, it works as expected. It provides surface street distances mostly in feet (eg: Turn right in 250 ft) and freeway distances in miles (eg: Exit right in 1/2 Mile). I tried this garmin device along with a TomTom Go 720 with updated maps, and both had similar routing paths. This was a big surprise because many people swear their life by Garmin, seemingly just for the name, and I did not have the device route me in a different path from the 720. I turned off the "estimated arrival time" feature, because my driving and traffic conditions varied this time too much to bother. I used it in and around Phoenix and Mesa AZ. The large difference why I am keeping the Garmin is because it said what side of the street my destination was on. I could not imagine how important this was, because my first trip with the TomTom took me to a sonic burger, only to have to make a U turn because I was in the wrong side of a divided highway. At that point I realized just how important the side of the street was in navigation. I'm sure TomTom could fix this with a software update if they wanted to, as the number in the address will be odd or even and that will make it either left or right side of street, only two choices. Anyway, I would like the Garmin to say the street name, but I'd rather save the $240 price difference I paid (cheaper than tomtom720) and instead have the "arriving at destination on left" notification.
