Mio DigiWalker C310x GPS

I've been watching for GPSs for a while. The trigger for me to finally buy one is an upcoming trip to Ireland. DealsPlus had an entry recently for a Mio DigiWalker C310x GPS from Frys for $198 (by the way, the price is still good as I write this).

Of course, I Googled it and found that there was a very active user community. Interestingly, it is a WinCE platform and can be unlocked as simply as holding down 2 of its buttons and resetting it!

It came in just a day before a friend was making a trip to Microsoft so I loaned it to him to get some real world experience. As expected, it was useful to navigate around in the rainy Northwest but unexpectedly he found that it did a really good job of knowing where subtleties like on-ramps were.

It's taken a couple of days to learn my way around the menus. They're not entirely intuitive.

With all the talk on the forums about hacking and skinning, I haven't found that I'm unhappy enough with the out of the box experience to make it work hacking. (I know that's hard to believe!)

People are complaining about the age of the U.S. maps (2005), I haven't had any problems with them so far. There are rumors of a $50 map update in the Spring of 2007. But, what I haven't found is European maps for the C310x.