Garmin iQue 3600 GPS Auto Bundle

My company car has a built-in GPS unit and I have gotten to like it, sort-of. I have gotten lost in a rental car trolling around Silicon Valley enough to get a portable GPS unit. After some research, the Garmin iQue 3600 is what I ended up with and I paid about $700. The unique feature of this portable GPS unit is that a PalmPilot comes integrated into the package. I use a PalmPilot, so this GPS unit replaces my PalmV. Installation was quite awkward, and getting it up and running was a chore. I got the thing synced up and some maps loaded and have been using it for several months now. It does do the job, fitfully, and has several glaring issues. Most irritating, the Palm function and the GPS function are not seamlessly integrated. If an address is entered in the Palm part and then route to this address is selected, the iQue 3600 makes you find the location. But the address from the Palm section doesn't transfer cleanly into the find section and you must retype the address. I'm left-handed and graffiti has NEVER worked for me all my letters are drawn backward. The GPS can be engaged as soon as it recognizes where you want to go, but my unit takes a good 5-10 minutes to find the satellites when first exposed to sky. This means that I must have a good idea what to do for the first 5-10 minutes. Sometimes I just drive randomly until the GPS locks in and starts to issue navigation orders. Also, the antenna must be deployed to get any GPS reception and must be forward enough in the windshield to see sky. This is OK, except that the iQue 3600 doesn't tell you that the antenna has not been deployed.The iQue 3600 does not work propped up on the passenger seat so a 5 pound holder is necessary to hold the unit on the dashboard. If the antenna is not deployed, the iQue 3600 simply doesn't navigate and doesn't tell you why. Worse, it acts stupid by going into a dangerous and unhelpful simulate mode. If I ever figure out what that means, Ill tell you in a future post. I figured out the antenna problem the hard way in an ice storm outside of Ottawa. I'm a fan of GUI design, and I must say that the UI here is very, very bad. Not the worse I have ever seen, but very bad: non-intuitive, inconsistent, and arbitrary. The FIND function/button has an entirely different function in the GPS section from the Palm section. Of course, the same icon is used. I cannot imagine grandma using this thing to navigate. What little there is of the very pretty documentation is atrocious. About 10 times more information is needed here. It shuts down randomly on occasion for no apparent purpose (Battery savings maybe?).The secure digital card is too small (max of 256MB), so you can't put more than a few California counties in the memory. Maps storage is managed with a rather hostile GUI. This is not fatal, but is irritating. I would rather put a 1GB SD card in the iQue 3600 and be done with it.The iQue 3600 burns too much power to be used as a portable, so it must always be tethered to the car or resting in the cradle. I don't find the power issue to be a problem. I understand that to get clear, bright screens it is necessary to use power. I agree with the tradeoff here.

I have wasted money on a lot of things that prove to be only half as good as they appeared to be. This product definitely exceeded my high expectations. I travel a lot, and many times, to places that I have never been before. This product was a life saver because it gets me to where I need to go every time, with only a few minor errors (i.e. newer streets not available, address slightly off on smaller side streets). However, one should not expect that it can be perfect every time, even though it does get it right more than I expected.I have been using Palm OS PDA's for several years now, so I was really excited when a friend told me about this. The PDA on the Garmin iQue 3600 is probably equivalent to a higher-end Palm-brand PDA (i.e. Tungsten) and it has worked out great for me since I took it out of the box.Please, keep in mind that this item is a PDA with a really good GPS navigation system. If you want a strict navigation system, Garmin makes a few products that are better for that purpose.The best features include:1. Integration of address book and GPS allows to quickly route to an existing address book entry or set up entries as waypoints for even quicker access.2. Tremendous list of stores, restaurants, etc. allows you to look up items near your current location, near your destination or even near a point that you choose on the map.3. It recalculates! If you miss your turn or make a wrong turn, it will automatically recalculate your trip based on your new location and make sure you still get to your destination.4. It is extremely mobile. It does everything a PDA needs to do and you can use it as a handheld GPS device while you are walking down the street. This is great in larger cities when you cannot always park in front of the building you need to go and you need to walk from a parking garage, or if you road in a taxi or took the subway/metro.The worst features/issues include:1. The poor battery life. I can understand the battery being drained quickly when the GPS is on, but when I am updating my contacts or inputting appointments it should not burn out the battery so quickly. Be sure you have access to a charger if you think you will need to use it a lot during the day. However, I have not had any problems with the battery draining significantly when I don't charge it for several days and it is not being used.2. The maps cannot be modified (or at least, I have not figure out how to do it). This is not a serious problem, but there was one instance where there was a new road near my destination that would have significantly reduced my travel time. The iQue didn't know the road was there and I could not add it for future trips. I just had to remember to ignore the last part of the directions and the iQue made it look like I was driving "off road" during that point of my trip.3. It takes a little while to upload new detailed maps. It never took up to 1.5 hours as one other review mentioned, but it is not a quick process. The few times that I did it, it took about 25 minutes for the software to prepare the maps and perform the hotsync. However, you should only need to do this every once in a while, unless you constantly need to change maps or you don't have enough memory to store all of the maps that you want.Regardless of any slight imperfections (as most products have), I plan to buy this product for my wife and for my mother. That just shows how much it has been a benefit to me and how much I can trust it.

The Garmin i-Que 3600 unit advertised from bigdaddy 675 on Amazon.com was advertised as being a complete unit in good working condition. I purchased it based on this information. What I received was a defective unit which could not beam or receive infra-red information at all, it has no serial number!!! and it did not have the a stylus, without which the unit is incomplete. I have tried on a number of occasions to contact this seller through Amazon.com without any success over a period of 20 days. I have now placed this credit card purchase in dispute.An extremely bad experience with this seller

I got the iQue 3600 bundle as i was moving to a new place where i got a job. The first day i got it, i headed out using the GPS to someones place for dinner (did not read the entire user guide), i put they address in the address book and used the iQue to route the way (bad idea). No matter the place i was supposed to go was in the same zip code, the GPS led me 40 miles away from my destination into the woods and pulled me up into dead ends three times. The other reviews about the battery life are also true. After that day i was skeptical in trusting the GPS but, if you route the way by entering each field in the find addresses location, it is 99 percent times accurate. I have been using it every since and is really good. The Automotive Friction Mount as other reviews suggested is also bad, so try others. Over all i think it is a good thing to have, speacially when heading out to a totally new place.