I'm not familiar with Garmin's product, but I've used most of the resident products like iGuidance, Tom-Tom, Mapopolis, Pharos, etc. I tried to discuss the pros/cons of "those" products vs. TeleNav, which I think is unique in how its different. Whether the redraw is faster or not, I don't know... you certainly won't have the downloads that need to occur, but once the maps are in the device the redraw times should be similar... and the TeleNav maps are optimized to be small so they may actually redraw faster. Running on EDGE, the downloads are noticable but certainly don't hinder use of the program. When I've run it on EVDO, the downloads were hardly noticable.

Even though you get to keep the maps, the bottom line is that they will become outdated, and in my past use I generally updated the maps about once a year. If you use this approach, the cost factor of TeleNav vs. a "bought" navigation program is minimal. And for any difference in cost, you are getting maps and point of interest data that is updated on an ongoing basis. I found the business search capability of TeleNav to be superior to the standalone programs.

Competition is good and there are many good alternatives for PDAPhone based navigation. Contrast this to just a few years ago when you had to use a wire attached GPS receiver, and the software was pretty weak. Things will only get better in years to come as the market is kind of crowded with products that look similar at present. The one that is very different is TeleNav, and I think we'll see them to exploit their differences as time goes on. I hope thats what we see, because I find it boring to have all products look essentially the same.

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Mike - Been Converged?