Hi All.

I am moving in four weeks, and also going for a veyr short trip on Saturday for 3 days.

I am thinking of just getting a SatNav over here to take with me (complete with North American maps of course).

Does anyone know if there are any issues in doing this - are the in-car chargers the same (the fag plug ins)?

Thanks,
Andrew

I bought mine in the UK prior to moving to the US (some time ago now!).

The charger was the same, and it worked perfectly well. Only issue I had was that sometimes it took a few minutes to load up on starting. Not really a problem, but it used to annoy the missus - that may be a specific model (Garmin Nuvi 270) though.

One thing to consider is that if you are buying one here, it will need to include the North American maps as well as any Eutopean maps (they don't all include this). This makes it more expensive than buying one over there with just the North American maps. Mine includes the whole world, and therefore has been a godsend for me travelling over Europe and the USA over the past 5 years.

Should have no problem. I have heard that Garmin have better maps of the US then Tomtom.

As my American wife keeps on telling me, it's a GPS (most people here don't know the term SatNav).
Obviously, I continue to call it a SatNav.

Cig lighters are standard size and you'll have no probs with that.

Shouldn't be a problem....but if you get one with the traffic updates, those won't work.

They're cheaper over here though, pick one up in a grocery store if you want to save some money.

Which one to get, well depends where you'll be I guess. Tomtom works really well in Boston, Magellen not so much because of the tunnels and tall buildings, but it worked pretty well up in Maine in the boonies.

A lot of phones nowadays work well as a SatNav/GPS.

Obviously you don't need to buy one of these to put it in but you get the idea...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Motorola...&skuId=4004049

One of the issues of using a phone is that many phone based stanav programs download maps via the cellphone network as you drive around. Not usually an issue if you stay in areas where you have data connectivity but may become a problem away from populated areas.

I'd just buy one when you get here on Saturday. You can get one from somewhere like Best Buy to try out. If you don't like it, you can return it. You can buy refurbished models at a discount. Make sure you get the maps you want as some models only cover the US (sometimes excluding Alaska) while others include US/Canada. Some include North America and Europe.

On my travels I've often bought something I needed short-term at Best Buy and then returned it at the end of my trip. I don't feel guilty as I've spent thousands at Best Buy over the years.

And ask for a GPS - not a SatNav!

We bought one from Bestbuy when we arrived, it was a lot cheaper than the UK

If you get decent maps such as Tomtom they are stored on the phone.

ours wouldn't work this year in the ciggy lighter, first time ever, the car we hired would not take the uk plug, we had to buy an adaptor in walmart for $20

Really?! I've never heard of that being a problem so that's really interesting. I've used them from the UK before with no issue - do you know if it was the UK plug or the american ciggy lighter that was the problem?

shld be universal?

the cigarette socket is the same in both countries so it is likely an issue with the sat nav/gps as opposed to the cigarette lighter port

That's what I thought but it's universally 12V so there'd be no reason for the GPS to see anything different from UK to US...