Okay, ya'll.. What do you recommend for a GPS receiver?

I know, "What am I going to use it for?"

Just about anything. I currently have a Garmin GPS12 (which I got about.. 4 years ago. And they're still making them. I'm impressed..) and it works rather well. The things I DON'T like about it are: 1. Battery life, 2. Can't connect to a PC and upload maps.. 3. No standard compass.

So, I'm looking for a receiver that I could possibly upload maps to (perhaps, someday, connect it to my Empeg), download data, and not die on me after a day's trip..

I notice that Magellan and Garmin seem to be "it". Magellan seems to be for the more geek-oriented (GPSs reading SD cards, color screens) while Garmin seems to be more- for lack of a better term- functionality driven.

So, comments? Suggestions? Should I just stickj with my trusty GPS12, for that matter, and save the money?

Thanks!
Me.

Well, the board favorite seems to be the Garmin GPS V. It's a nice mixture of units, offering street driving navigation, and good portable use as well. Batteries for me tend to last about 12 hours with little backlight usage. Memory wise, it is not expandable, but can hold enough for a decent sized area. Mine currently has all of southern Colorado, plus the area across Texas to Dallas, then also Austin. This includes all the local attractions.

I've also got the GPS V and so does Loren I believe. I love the thing. Its small and has pretty much all the features you'll need. The UI is straightforward and the directions it gives are pretty good (for the most part). With 19mb of storage, you should be fine. I live in SoCal and i'm able to fit pretty much all of LA and Orange County, along with some other areas.

I have a Garmin 76S for sale. It is in perfect condition and has all the features you would be looking for. The only reason for the sale is I just don't use it enough.

I also had the GPS V. Really a great unit. The only issue (for me) was the 19MB storage and map transfer through serial.

I travel a lot to areas out of reach of the 19MB. This means that if I were going from NY to Boston, I would have to drop some maps inbetween the two end points. This is not so terrible since there is a base map built into the unit that will display major routes (such as interstates) when there is no detailed map present.

Anyway, I recently bought the Street Pilot III. It is also excellent and solves the problems with the GPS V. It has 128MB of removable media and USB map transfer. Garmin just came out with a newer version of the SPIII which uses compact flash as its map media and has a wireless remote. Street Pilot 2610