For me it has to be hands down the DeLorme LT-20 with DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2005.

I have now tried this "GPS" on 3 different long trips and I have to tell you, if you didn't know where you were going this GPS would do its damndest to try and get you lost.

The first time I tried this was at the July Big Event to Columbus, OH. I bought it just for the trip. Built a mount for my laptop to attach to the passenger seat, mapped out the trip and planned to Long Island. Yes, planned. I saw the route the software wanted to take me and it was about 10 miles out of my way so I changed the directions and recalculated the trip and it seemed to accept it. Head out to OH via NY, NJ and PA. It kept telling me I was off the planned route even when I was clearly on the Interstates it said to be on. It did this the entire trip out there. It had problems finding the hotel and then exits I had to take. Whenever I had to pull off and get gas or eat it would get confused, remap the directions in the opposite direction from the 1/4 to where the entry was back onto the Interstate.

The second time I used this was a trip to a friends wedding up in the Finger Lakes Region of NY. I had been there a bunch of times but wanted to see how this thing handled the drive. It was even worse than the drive to OH if you can believe that. It would get lost on the NY Thruway, telling me to pull off at nonexistant exits. When my exit was approaching it showed I had 20 or miles to go. It didn't have many of the smaller roads so it go confused... even though these roads are well over 100 years old.

On my trip back home the GPS/Software insisted I take turns that would literally show on the map driving right through Lake Seneca and Lake Canandaigua! these are 2 of the Finger Lakes! lol

I contact DeLorme about this and they said that the GPS unit itself had to be broken, so they sent me a new one. Fast forward to last weekend and my drive to Detroit.

Again the software had all sorts of problems mapping the shortest route off Long Island for me so I did that on my own. It then said to take I80 right to Toledo, simple enough. Whenever I pulled off for gas it would freak out again. Yelling at me for constantly being "off route". When i got to where my exit was that road was closed and there were detours... not good for my stupid GPS. It yelled at my the entire time for the lat 75 minutes of the trip to Detroit. Because I changed the route on the damn thing it freaked out. Insisted I double back and get off at the exit it said I had to take. So instead of my trip continuing to get shorter from here, it got longer the further I drove from being "off course".

The same thing happened on my drive home, I couldn't map around the detour because the software insisted I had to take I280 no matter what. it was really stupid. then as I am driving along on I80 it all of a sudden tells me to head south on I78 and drive through Pittsburgh, PA! lol No way was I going to do this. So the entire rest of the trip... about 7+ hours it would tell me I am off course, recalculating route and recalc about every 30 minutes. My trip grew from 650 miles to over 1,400 miles for my trip home! 11 hours to 27 hours. lol It was a freakin' joke after a while.

When i got into my town instead of heading directly home I stopped at my sisters. By doing this it saw I made another course deviation and it immediately remapped me to head back to Ohio to get "back on course".

I am now fighting DeLorme to take this $100 piece of cr@p off my hands and refund my money. They say they can't refund my money without a receipt! A manager refuses to call me back, just need to find the time to call tomorrow and fight this one.

I will take the $100 and put it towards a TomTom Go 300.

So for anyone thinking of getting an inexpensive "GPS" to use on your laptop... stay away from DeLorme and the dumb LT-20. POS!

i use the microsoft streets and trips with gps on my laptop, and it works great...

Garmin is also nice, it will tell you what street to turn on, where the Tomtom won't.

Garmin has very frequent firmware updates, and they listen very closely to their users suggestions for feature requests.

another vote for the garmin C series. I used a C330 for a trip to vegas and I loved it. I believe the c340 has text to speech capability and available traffic update service.

Been using Delorme Street Atlas 2005 and lately 2006 with a Delorme Earthmate. Never been lost, seems as accurate as can be. Haven't had a problem in nearly 2 years with either the voice control or routing.

Also use Street Atlas 2006 for the Pocket PC on my motorcycle with my iPaq. Also works fine.

I've used iGuidance(Pocket PC -PPC), Delorme (Laptop and PPC), MS Streets & Trips(Laptop), and TomTom(PPC). I found Delorme to be the worst.

iGuidance is the only one I use now. Map accuracy is a big deal to me. TomTom and Delorme is using TeleAtlas maps, and once in a while do find some map accuracy errors. On the other hand, iGuidance and MS S&T use Navteq maps. Navteq is hands down superior than TeleAtlas.

Now interface comes in second, Delorme again is the worst. I does have alot of features like voice (text to speech - even street names) for directions but I found it too hard to understand and is not of great help. Tomtom I gues has the best interface, its 3D is almost like the road I see on my windshield. Iguidance comes second, it also has voice but it doesn't say the streetnames. Just left in 300ft.. etc. MS S&T doesn't even have a voice. So looking at laptop makes your trip a bit more dangerous. If you do have a navigator on the passenger seat on a long trip, then this software is good.

In summary, iGuidance (also called Routis) takes my vote as best and Delorme as worst. If Delorme has better Maps then I'm sure it goes out of the cellar. Next to my list would be Tomtom (if not again for the Teleatlas maps) it could have been my first. Tomtom is a Europe based company, it has great reviews in Europe as I think they got the best maps for europe. However, got the worst maps for the US. I heard that they have shifted to Navteq, but I'm not sure. MS S&T is good for road trips with a navigator, the position locator in the map doesn't snap to the road though, so you can see your car is sometimes (if not most of the times off the road)

I've used both the Delorme with my laptop. I used the Delorme moderately because i had to unpack my laptop everytime and it made it pretty impractical for me. i gave it to my brother and he has used it well.

I found the Garmin to do faster more accurate calculations. I bought my Garmin 2720 when it first became available in August, 05. There have already been numerous software updates. The only problems i had was in Manhattan. Satellite reception in a city with tall buildings sucks. But thats the case for all GPS.

some company in Europe is launching a competing network to the US GPS system that is supposed to be accurate to the inch, and will work inside buildings in some cases, but it will be subscription based, and not be ready until 2010

My wife, sitting in the passenger seat, trying to read a map....
Worst GPS ever.:rolleyes:

I found the Garmin to do faster more accurate calculations. I bought my Garmin 2720 when it first became available in August, 05. There have already been numerous software updates. The only problems i had was in Manhattan. Satellite reception in a city with tall buildings sucks. But thats the case for all GPS.

I have a Garmin 2610 and use mine with external (amplified) antenna (mine is made by Gilsson). I'd say it is twice as effective as the built-in, but you will still lose signal in the city due to tall buildings. However, what used to be borderline signal now becomes usable.

If you need to unplug your GPS after each use (a necessity for NYC if you don't want it stolen), get an external antenna with a straight plug. I have an extra Gilsson antenna with 90 degree (right angle) plug (on 20ft cable), it is more difficult to unplug because your fingers can't grip it as well. I now have the straight plug version and will probably sell the other one.

Thanks Ob3 for 411!

It's an old thread but I felt the need to add to it as conditions may have changed in the last couple years.

My employers used to use Delorme products to aid in locating addresses but we stopped using their maps entirely around 2000-2002 because they were just so darned inaccurate - and the reason being that Delorme decided to stop using commercial map data suppliers like Navtec and start producing their own database. It cut costs for Delorme but the very next map updates for their products were dismal. About the same time, they came out with a new map interface that was so unintuitive that, combined with the unreliable maps, ended up costing them a hefty government contract when we switched to Microsoft products. Microsoft had a less functional interface but it was easier to use, and more important, they relied on Navtec for their map data which was much more dependable.

I watched the debate between Delorme vs Microsoft for a few years as the opposing sides argued over "bells & whistles" vs "dependable maps" but gradually lost track of it all. Now I'm wondering if the current product from Delorme has finally solved the "It's pretty on the computer but where'd the road go?" problem? Has Microsoft fixed the problems with their last couple of releases that caused it to crash constantly? Come to think of it, Delorme had the same problem.

When I'm on the road, I use a higher end Garmin Nuvi, a TomTom, and a laptop with an older version of MS's Streets&Trips and find that the Garmin is fairly reliable although less than perfect because it rarely provides -enough- information, the TomTom often ends up getting shut off due to bad mapping, and the old S&T software still gives me the best info for navigating. I just got the E and haven't put a new laptop mounting in it yet. The RAM mount looks best but I'm concerned about how far that base bracket sticks out to hit the heels of the passenger. The pictures make it look pretty bad.