jr conlin's ink stained banana

i think i figured out pretty early that what i find most bothersome about Christmas is getting gifts. Mostly because i feel horribly inadequate afterwards (i love to give, mind you, but that's different and generally something much easier to do anyway.) For things like homemade gifts of pure awesome, i'm speechless. For gadgety gifts, however, i've got a few more words.

In a pure Gift of the Magi move, my parents sent me a Magellan Maestro 4000 GPS. Of course, i kinda already have a GPS (which is kinda good news meaning that even after doing this for five years, my parents STILL don't know about this blog). Having two GPS (GPSii?) is a bit excessive, so i'm weighing between the new one (with 30% extra Guilt) and the one i got myself. Good news, both are within their return period, and i've got receipts. Here's the breakdown, since i've not been able to find a good one on line.

Size
The Maestro is big in just about every way. It's heavier, larger, thicker and even packs twice as much memory as the Garmin 200w. Still, after watching Top Gear and living my life far shorter than most other folks, i've learned that bigger isn't always better. That turns out to be a bit telling.

Here's a stack comparison of the two, with the geek comparison item of choice, an empty altoids tin.

And here's the view from the side:

A few notes: The Magellan is thicker than the Altoid tin while the Garmin is thinner. This means that while the Garmin fits rather nicely in a shirt pocket, the Magellan… doesn't. It's hard to explain really, but it fills out most pockets leaving little room for anything else. This is a device one mounts and leaves in place. Well, until someone else decides to relieve you of it (more on that later).

Orafices
The Garmin has three (provided you include the slider on/off/lock switch), the USB2 mini-B port on the back, and the SD Memory card slot. This is because the USB2 port is not only how you connect up the beast, but how you charge it. Granted, having it on the back is retarded because it means that it will never lay flush while being plugged in, but that's a minor nit.

The Magellan has five-ish, reset hole, power button, USB2 mini-B port, SD memory card, power adapter hole and earphone jack. Unlike the Garmin, power doesn't come from the USB2 port, but the dedicated power jack (one more wall wart to bring while travelling, i'd guess). The "-ish" comes from a small hole next to the screen that doesn't seem to offer any actual purpose. Granted, same with the earphone jack, since it doesn't play music the only folks with headphones with this are people trying not to look like they're horribly lost.

User Interface
Both have similar user interface options, with the Garmin having a bit simpler display. The Magellan boots faster than the Garmin does and drops you to a main menu. The Garmin drops you to the map view. Eventually the Magellan switches to the map view too. As a note, the Magellan has a far better ability to lock onto satellites as it's able to get a signal sitting beneath a steel roof in my office where the Garmin is unable to find anything.

The map views for both devices are easy enough to read, with the Garmin putting more whitespace around the black characters giving the letters a bit more emphasis, also street names follow the roads they mark. The Magellan uses thinner lines and straighter text with small red dots at the lower left of labels indicating the street they mark. The Magellan also overlays POIs like gas stations where the Garmin focuses on street nav alone.

Both offer "draggable" maps with the Garmin switching to 2D. Oddly, the Garmin feels more responsive to dragging than the Magellan does even though the both offer the same overall refresh period.

The Magellan announces each context switch with a voice prompt where the Garmin uses a simple tone.

Finding Stuff
i tried a few simple tests to see just how rich both data sets were. Of course, both Yahoo! and Google were not listed on either (not a huge surprise, but it'd be nice). What i found somewhat surprising was when i tried a few other offerings.

Using the "spelling" feature for Points of Interest, terms for "FRYS", "BED BATH AND BEYOND" and "MCDONALDS" returned results for the Garmin (except for the brand new BB&B over in Campbell). Surprisingly, none of these returned results using the Magellan. Using the roots for "McDonald" and "Fry" did return results, but were far fewer than i expected (Fry's Electronics was not listed as a POI).

Other bits
On Christmas Day, Magellan's site was Slooooow and prone to hanging with "Our servers are currently undergoing regularly scheduled maintenance. " message. Yeah, right, uh-huh. Garmin, on the other hand, was very fast and responsive.

Also, Garmin's devices are AMAZINGLY hackable. Since most data is stored as XML files, it's trivial to go in and do some pretty nifty mods to it. i can't help but get the feeling that i'd be able to crack the voice file format and add my own insulting messages.

Then there's battery life. For being bigger and heavier, the Magellan lasts 2 hours on battery. The Garmin lasts 5. With the Garmin, i could get 3/4ths of the way to L.A. without plugging in. With the Magellan, i might make it to Salinas before i suddenly realize i left the damn power adapter in the other car.

The Garmin has a security lock. i've yet to find it with the Magellan, and i've spent time going through all the options. Guess which would wind up on ebay faster after my window is broken?

Sorry, Mom and Dad, but the Magellan loses. i'll probably return it and see if i can get another Garmin for the other car or one to walk around with.

Great, so that pretty much ensures that this is the one post they read.

P.S. Just so i don't sound like the sort of ungrateful slob that would critique a gift from my parents, i'm very happy that they thought of giving me something like this. It was incredibly generous of them. i just figured i'd take the rare opportunity i'd have to compare the two devices and help you decide between the two as well. If the Magellan was the only GPS i had, i'd definitely be quite happy with it.