Lots of bugs. Was a great value for the price.

I purchased this GPS device for my husband's birthday in August 2006. The price at that time was approximately $375 after rebate. Being newbies to using GPS, we were (and still are) highly impressed with its usefulness. We have it mounted in our main car and turn it on whenever we drive whether it be within San Francisco or the greater Bay Area. We have also taken it on vacation on I on my business trips and have found it to be invaluable. The Averatec has allowed us to drive with confidence, and without having to carry a map or stop to print out a map or directions, in Tampa, Miami/South Beach, New Jersey, Houston, Austin, and of course, all over California as far North as Sacramento and as far South as San Diego. It has a touch screen (use finger or included stylus) as well as buttons for main functions.

Now, there are cons to this unit. The unit can operate without power for about 2-3 hours on a full charge. After that it'll give you a very short warning (20-30 seconds or so) before the unit dies. Once it dies it loses all basic memory (maybe it doesn't have any?) For instance, there is a setting for "Home" where you enter in your home address. If you allow the unit to run out of power (which we do often), it'll forget "Home" and you have to set it again the next time you want to use the "Home" feature. Otherwise the "Home" feature is great since you can hit a button from your current location and the unit will navigate you "Home". It'll also forget your timezone and basic settings. This is something that is very sad to see in the year 2006. My guess is there is no internal battery to remember these very basic settings when the unit dies.

The unit can die if you just leave it sitting (even if turned off) in your car. We usually turn off and unplug the unit to store it out of sight if we aren't planning to drive for a while. We have gone away on vacation and come back to find that the unit has discharged. Sure, its easy enough to plug it back in and re-enter all your settings, but I don't think you should have to do that for a $300-$400 device. For now, we have decided to keep the unit permanently plugged in and keep our car parked in our garage.

There is a neat feature where the display will have a deep blue background at nighttime and light yellow/cream background in the daylight hours. Sometimes the unit will get confused and show a split display -- half day and half night. The Averatec will usually correct itself if you give it a little time (15-30 minutes.)

There have been times when the unit has frozen up while we were using it. This is easy to fix by simply using the stylus to reset the unit (and all of our settings.)

I also don't know if this is typical of GPS devices, but it can take 10 minutes sometimes for the Averatec to find a signal. Sometimes I have to just head in the general direction of my destination without the GPS because it can't get ready fast enough.