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Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe USB Sensor for Laptops

Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe USB Sensor for Laptops

(86 customer reviews)

SKU:

DHGPS18PACKAGE

This product is currently out of stock

Description:

Turn your laptop PC into a powerful street navigator with the GPS 18 — a GPS sensor bundled with nRoute™ and City Select software that automatically guides you with turn-by-turn directions and voice prompts to get you safely to your destination. Similar to Garmin's MapSource® software, nRoute features an easy-to-use interface, making it intuitive to operate so you can focus on driving. It offers auto-routing and voice-prompting capabilities to virtually any address. The GPS 18 ships with fully unlocked MapSource® City Select® CDs, which provide full coverage of the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico (North America version) or major metropolitan areas throughout Western Europe (Europe version). Map detail includes highways, interstates, business and residential roads, with turn restrictions, speed categories, and other navigation features. It also features more than five million points of interest including restaurants, lodging, attractions, shopping, emergency services, post offices, and more. The GPS 18 includes a 12 parallel channel, WAAS-enabled sensor, available with either a PC or USB connection. The receiver includes an integrated magnetic base and is less than three inches in diameter. Traveling with your laptop on business or vacation? The GPS 18 is a simple, convenient, inexpensive way to turn your PC laptop into a personal navigator to get you where you're going.

Features:

•

12 Parallel Channels & WAAS-Enabled Sensor

•

Available In Either A Serial Or Usb Connection

•

Designed To Plug Into Most Laptop Pcs

•

Offers Automatic Routing

•

& Voice Prompt Navigation To Virtually Any Address

Product Details:

Product Length:	8.5 inches
Product Width:	5.8 inches
Product Height:	3.6 inches
Product Weight:	0.22 pounds
Package Length:	8.4 inches
Package Width:	5.8 inches
Package Height:	3.5 inches
Package Weight:	1.0 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 86 reviews

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Customer Reviews:

Average Customer Review: 4.0

( 86 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 59 found the following review helpful:

Great product with a few annoyancesDec 01, 2004
By W. Wright
For the money, this is a great value. If you already have a laptop, then for $129 you have most of the functionality of a $1500 built-in navigator. For basic functionality, it's a 5 star item. I have used around New England for about two months, and have navigated back roads and highways. Resolution, maps, screen displays, ETA, position, etc, are all superb. Once you have selected a route and are on the way it's better than the built-in units, because it has a bigger screen (your laptop) with more information.

But without a touch screen, it's a little clumsy to use, and you have to plan on putting in destinations while stopped somewhere. It's not a bad process, takes only a few minutes, but it's slower and not as smooth as a Honda Navigator (point of reference).

You can save any waypoints or routes and recall them easily. You can show gas stations, atms, etc. It talks to you, and anticipates turns, etc very well.

Overall, a fantastic value for the price. Any defects are forgiven. When they produce a pda or tablet version, so that you could use a touch-screen, it will be a huge hit.

28 of 28 found the following review helpful:

A great system. I'm putting a laptop in my car to use itOct 19, 2005
By Dave Beck "Dave B"
I've tried out the three popular GPS systems for laptops and find this the best. The other two; Delormer, and Microsoft have a long way to go to match the Garmin usb unit. They all have good features its just the Garmin does it best. For example, when aquiring satelites, by the time you've got the program booted the Garmin is ready to go. The others can take several minutes and clicking around to get them running. Not a good thing when your in a hurry. Next comes auto-routing. The Garmin excels in this area.In normal use, its very good and faster than the others. Garmin makes a lot of GPS units unlike the other 2 and I think they've got this right. However no GPS I've used is perfect at routing, it's just far less likely to take you out of your way. And if you don't believe or like their route, the Garmin has a handy feature in that it automatically and quickly reroutes itself when you don't follow its direction. Within a block of ignoring its directions it has replotted a new course for you. This handy feature lets you head in the direction you want and then if you get lost, you can just start following the GPS again - handy for us know it all guys that occasionally get lost. The other units are not nearly so friendly in this regard. They want you to follow their map or else. The Delormer unit, while better than the Microsoft unit, has the habit of being late in its direction and also likes to give you directions that amount to simply going straight on the same road.
Some other handy Garmin feature: 1)The map changes to night time display automatically when the sun goes down.This is much easier on the eyes while driving 2) There is a button you can press that will find a route from where ever you are to home. Just press the button and it will show you the way home. 3)With a click you can set your PC clock to GPS atomic time. 4) The unit will let you select two items to display on the map, such as expected time of arrival, and time or distance to next turn. As with any product there could be improvements. The search feature is not as friendly as I'd like. To search, you're expected to type in the name only, not north, drive, etc. You then pick from a long generic list of names that might not even exist -so this is a bit funky. However, if you can find the location you want on a map, you can right click it and route to it. Overall this is a great unit and I have now installed a laptop in my minivan so it will always be available. I would not do this with the other units because they require too much fiddling around with to make them work and this is too dangerous while driving. (I've made a tray to hold and hid my laptop that fits between the two front bucket seats and rests on top of the plastic base for the seats. The tray also acts like a table between the seats.)
I must tell you however of a few facts about this soft. The unit in the box I got had old software and old maps. You need to go to Garmin's website to download the updates for the software and you need to request Garmin to send a free CD for new maps. Both were updated around June 05. Once you load these in, you need to unlock the maps. There was an unlock code in the box that worked with the original maps, but so far, I have not been able to successfully to keep the updated maps unlocked. Everytime I turn it on it wants me to unlock them again. Perhaps connecting to the internet and registering will help. Even with this issue, I will give it 5 stars

21 of 21 found the following review helpful:

NMEA compliantNov 25, 2005
By Fred Flintstone "Fred"
All of the previous reviews are pretty much on the money. The unit works great, very accurate. I do wish it was easier to change the routing the way Delorme uses VIAs, maybe there is a way i haven't found yet.

My main addition to info for everybody is that using a little $10 program called GPS Gate will turn the Garmin 18 USB from a proprietary Garmin format to a NMEA compliant device. I had a copy of MS Streets & Trips and it worked fine. Just do a google search for gpsgate and you can try it for 2 weeks before you buy. That removes the only downside I thought this product had, now it can work with any application looking for a NMEA compliant GPS.

23 of 24 found the following review helpful:

Best laptop GPS availableJan 02, 2005
By Jim A "Jim"
I first tried Microsoft's Streets and Trips with GPS and I was quite dissapointed. I'm not sure how they even consider it a GPS system. I then tried Garmin's GPS 18, as Garmin is considered to be one of the better known GPS manufactures. I have no regrets at all. The Garmin met my expectations.

Benefits to the Garmin GPS 18 are:

1) Voice prompts (what good is a GPS system without this?)
2) Auto-reroute, it automatically will recalculate a route if you go off track. This requires no user interaction at all.
3) The status screen automatically tells you what house numbers you are driving by or what streets are approacting.
4) Large text display stating clear and accurate directions.
5) Provides estimates of ETA and mileage to destination and next manuever.

I have no complaints really. I do agree with one thing though, finding addresses could be a little simpler. For example, it will find "Stop & Shop", but not "Stop and Shop". It will find Malden Dr. if you type Malden, but not if you enter Malden Dr. A couple annoyences, but you learn how to use it and it's good.

22 of 23 found the following review helpful:

nRoute software is a travestyOct 27, 2007
By D. Tuma
I was very excited to purchase this product. I typically have my laptop open while my husband is driving anyway, so I saw this as a great way to get full GPS navigation capability at a fraction of the price of a standalone GPS unit.

However, the nRoute software that came with this unit is a catastrophe. Garmin has written fantastic, intuitive, usable software to run on its standalone devices - but nRoute has none of those characteristics. Use it for 5 minutes, and you will be pulling your hair out.

I write software for a living, and I'm always the person my relatives turn to when they need their computers fixed. My friends are always amazed at my ability to figure out and use complex software applications. But nRoute contains enough flaws that it becomes frustratingly unusable, even for a tech-saavy individual like me.

What is the most common thing you would want to do with a GPS navigator? Why, enter a street address and route to it. Unfortunately, this simple act is virtually impossible. To select the street, you type a portion of the street name. The software then ignores the city/state/zip code you've already entered, and displays every street in North America that looks similar. For example, I tried to do a search for "River Road". Over 50 different river roads are listed, with such useful names as "River Rd", "River Road", "River Road Rd", "River Road 1", "River Road 2", etc. The best you can do is choose one, make several mouse clicks, and then be told that there are no matches. (That street doesn't exist in that city - no matches!) So you attempt to select the next street in the list (which requires 5 mouse clicks), only to be told that there are no matches there either. Working your way through 50 different possibilities can take several minutes. After a week of use, I have NEVER been able to get the software to recognize a single street address.

If you already know the exact location you're trying to go, you can manually find the location, right-click, and choose "Route to here". But can you imagine using an interface like that, for example, in Google maps? "Here's a picture of LA ... just manually find the place you're trying to go, zoom all the way down to the street level manually, and right-click..." That's absurd, but that's what you have to do. So the only way I've been able to use this software at all is to do a preliminary search with Google Maps, visually identify where I'm going, and then manually locate that same location in nRoute. If you happen to be in your car without an internet connection, you're out of luck.

For the record, it is easier to search for a point of interest in their database. So if you know you're looking for the Hilton, you can search for potential matches, pick one, and route to it. When other people report success with this product, I imagine that they must be using it in this way. (Or perhaps the street searching algorithm works better in some cities than others?)

Of course, if you perform a search for a generalized category like "Restaurants," the user interface becomes maddening once again. It would make sense to display the results on a map, but instead they are displayed in table form. You can click on the results one at a time, and the map will zoom down to show you the intersection where that one result is located - but it zooms down so far that you can't see where it is located in the overall scheme of things. You cannot interact with the map to change the zoom level until you dismiss the table of search results. Then if you want to see where the next search result is located, you have to open the search window and restart your search from scratch. So there is no way to do something simple, like see whether a bunch of restaurants are clustered together nearby.

When you're in motion, the software gives voice prompts, like "in 0.7 miles, turn right." Unfortunately, these voice prompts are useless. It would be nice if the software could say, "turn right on Main Street" or even "turn right now." Since it does not, you need to become very talented at judging exactly how far 0.7 miles is so you know when you're supposed to turn. If you're in a city with side streets each a block apart, this is impossible. Ultimately, you MUST have a dedicated navigator in your passenger seat who is watching the map and telling you when you need to turn.

Also, the software doesn't provide any convenient way to alter the route. In my case, it wanted me to turn down a private road that had a locked gate. I obviously couldn't turn, so it would eventually recalculate the route. But every time my travels took me anywhere near that road it would give the voice prompts of "in 0.7 miles, turn left." Since the voice prompts are giving you so little information, you have to become talented at remembering where you are located so you know whether to heed or ignore the voice instruction. Wasn't that the whole purpose of having a GPS???

With the other wonderful products they create, I can't imagine why Garmin would release such a frustrating piece of software. I wonder if they intentionally distribute this terrible software in an attempt to push consumers toward a more expensive product.

See all 86 customer reviews on Amazon.com

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Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe USB Sensor for Laptops

Garmin GPS 18 Deluxe USB Sensor for Laptops

DHGPS18PACKAGE

12 Parallel Channels & WAAS-Enabled Sensor

Available In Either A Serial Or Usb Connection

Designed To Plug Into Most Laptop Pcs

Offers Automatic Routing

& Voice Prompt Navigation To Virtually Any Address