Please put your flame suit on, but realize that I am not picking on you, just trying to learn from actual users which GPS units serve their needs.
The market is saturated with GPS units, even my grocery store sells them now. Some of them are quite capable of helping a jeeper find his way around while off road, but many others are not. Your enthusiastic endorsement sounds like it came from more from Lowrance ad copy than personal experience. Please forgive me for the comments I am about to make:
xDUMPTRUCKx said:
okay lets see.
Its the only completely ruggidized, weather proof, shock proof gps of its kind on the market.
I am not sure what "kind" of GPS the 540c is but this claim is also made by Garmin for all of it's outdoors GPS's, including the Zumo, which I have used in the rain on my motorcycle in addition to in my Cherokee.
its used by every, and i mean EVERY race vehicle in off road racing like SCORE and MDR.
Off road racing is a completely different world than the jeeping that I use a GPS for. Whether exploring someplace I have never been or leading a dozen other Jeeps through a trail I am not completely familiar with, my GPS needs to quickly and clearly tell me which way I need to go to get where I want to go. For 3 days last year I got to pretend to be a Baja race car driver:
...
...in a car equipped with a Lowrance Baja 540c:
One thing I learned is that there is a co-driver in most cars who's job is to run the GPS and navigate. I still managed to get us lost. To the credit of the Lowrance, most of the roads we drove weren't on it's map and no track was stored for us to follow.
The mapping software is incredible.
Can it automatically calculate a route from where you are to where you want to be when you don't even know where you are right now? I suspect not judging from the features in the link you posted, one of which states, "Add straight-line GPS navigation to your off-road vehicle!"
Can you save your tracks to a computer for future download to the Lowrance so you can follow them as a route?
It is large but so so worth it.
What more could you need/want?
well there is the 8" screen version, the 840c....
I guess that is a matter of preference. The one 540c I have seen installed in a Wrangler took up an appalling amount of space on the dashboard.
I couldn't imagine where to mount a
larger version of it, even in a Cherokee.
If the Lowrance in fact does
not perform auto-routing duties then even an 8 inch screen is too small. I had trouble picking out roads on a 15.4 inch laptop screen hooked to a GPS, this is why I feel the ability to auto-route is one of the 2 most important things a Jeepin GPS should do.
You saved the best for last:
oh and everybody on pirate says its the best
I have been web wheeling long enough to know that when someone supports an argument with internet hearsay it is a sure sign of someone who is not all that familiar with whatever it is they are touting.
Here are the 2 most important things I think a GPS suited to Jeep use should be able to do.
1) Automatically generate a route from point A to point B, using roads stored on maps that you can easily download to the unit.
2) For those situations where the cartographers don't know about the roads/trails you use: The ability to download a track or route from saved from a previous trip, from the internet, or even made from scratch on your computer (all of which I have done with Garmin GPS's), put said track/route in your GPS and have it route you to where you want to go.
Once again, I am not attacking you personally, I am trying to determine for my benefit and the benefit of our fellow
members, which of the exploding number of GPS units on the market will serve our need the best.
