Post your iQue GPS Story

[NewPrism]

I downloaded and watched the Garmin iQue 3600 commercial- of the fella who is trying to make his appointment, drops his keys, splits his pants, finds a tailor with his Garmin.....

I had mine for only a few days so this aint very interesting, but its the only story I got right now....
I was to pick up a coworker who was on the way to the restaurant where our company Christmas Party was being held. I had never been to his place before and was not familar with the area he lives in. But I entered his address and the iQue mapped it. I got in my car and plugged the iQue in the autonav beanbag holder. It reset and dropped all the data. Harrumphh!! I resynced and this time, unplugged the autonav holder power before mounting the iQue. So far so good. Now I was late. And of course this was the first time I tried to nav using 2 waypoints.... so of course I got the waypoints out of order. I had set the iQue to get me to the restaurant first, then go pick up my coworker. Obviously this wasnt going to work, so I used the map display to drive to his place all the time getting "Off Route" warnings. When I got close to the waypoint on the map, it stopped me right at his driveway. My buddy was giving me instruction to get to the freeway. Garmin said turn left, he said go straight. The freeway entrance was to the left- Garmin was right!
After the company dinner, leaving the restaurant, I popped in the Garmin (I knew how to get home but needed to familiarize myself with the unit) and it reset itself.... again. Dang it.

So, with all us iQue users out there, there must be a few with pretty interesting stories about how your iQue

1) got you lost
2) got you found
3) saved the day
4) saved your butt

Post your interesting story.....

[funbob]

I haven't had any "adventures in navigation" yet with the iQue. Most of my use is pretty straightforward. Mainly I use it to get to a restaurant or club that I'm not sure where it is. As far as the iQue saving my butt goes, I use it waypoint my car when I park downtown at night. Makes it a whole lot easier to find later on. I also find it very helpful when I do know how to get to where I'm going but I'm not sure what side of the road or intersection it's on. Saved me a lot of U-turns so far.

It has yet to get me lost. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one. Hasn't gotten me found yet either. Closest it's come to saving the day is when I was out shopping and I realized I was out of cat food and used it to find the nearest pet store. Pathetic, I know :D

[TKinNY]

You want an IQ story? this was originally posted on a GPS-oriented newsgroup on Usenet on Aug 18.

---

Got my IQue last Thursday (Aug 14). Couldn't make it work with my Win98 SE desktop -- wouldn't reboot after the Garmin/Palm software was installed. So I installed it on my XP-based laptop. Turned out to be a good thing since about 20 minutes later, the lights went out. We're in NYC.

The next morning, my son called. Grandchild about to be born in Washington DC. Still no power, so I decided to see if the laptop would download maps with both units running on battery. (Ique screen dimmed to minimum.)

Well, it worked, so we decided to leave the GPS V at home and test drive the IQue on a real road trip. No car cord, and no place to buy one since the stores were all closed due to the blackout. Not too sure how to use the iQue as there was no time to read the manual, so there was a lot of guessing.

We finally ended up in a mall near Princeton, and visited a Radio Shack, a CompUSA, and a Best Buy. At the Best Buy, we scored one of these:

http://www.palmone.com/us/products/accessories/chargerscablescradles/P10884U.html

This cable has a USB plug which can go into either the included cigarette lighter adaptor or the USB connector on my laptop. This lets you travel with just one cable. At the hotel, I was able to hook the IQue to the laptop and use a single cable for power/charging and sync.

After all is said and done, the trip was a success. The IQue 3600 is a fantastic widget that makes travelling easy.

And Carina Nicole Karp was born on Saturday evening.

---

Notes: this was before the Garmin car kit was available.

Coming out of the Baltimore Tunnel, towards DC, I got my very first modem screech. It was a bit panicy for a few minutes there.

[JBrian]

Went on a hunting trip in PA left from my home in CT. I decided to stop at the new Cabela's Store in PA on the way.
Garmin IQue "Betty" got me to Cabela's then got me to my friends farm and home again. Never Looked map never
doubted I was heading I the right direction a made greate time.

Interesting aside.

After leaving Cabela's, Betty tells me to trun left but that didn't look right to me. So I a went straight; Betty was right and I got
"Off Route" recalculating. She said 400 feet ahead take U-turn as there was a Cop siting right there I went right past the U-turn in
the middle of the road. You guessed it "Off Route" recalculating She then said take exit on right in 200 feet. So I did
holy sh*t I entering a limited access highway. As I got on Highway she said exit on right 100 feet. Bingo I get off I right back
where I ways when I got on only heading in the opposite direction. I never question Betty again.

:D

[jerrmorn]

I was showing off my iQue to some fellow co-workers in my car and we were travelling to a location with a group of cars of other co-workers. I set up the iQue for the address and off we went. We were last in line and when the cars in front of me went straight, Betty told me to take a left. As I did so, everyone in the car whined that we should have gone straight and followed the others. However, after about 10 minutes, we met up with the rest of the group as we passed them all at a stop sign. I'll never second-guess Betty again and it sure shut up my whimpering co-workers.

However, Betty is currently in the shop so I'm left to stupid Mapquest printouts...

[dirkus]

Not really a story on the iQue saving the day but, I believe, rather interesting...

I recently participated in a 3-day, 60 mile walk for charity. I got myself an armband holder and packed along "GyPSy" (my son's name for the iQue). I need to say here that the charity was in support of breast cancer research and so the majority of the participants (95%) were women.

At first I got a lot of people asking me what it was and even got a few people that saw the antenna sticking out and warned me that my cell phone was about to fall out! When I told them what it was I would initially get ribbed along the lines of "what a geek", "only a guy would do that!", "what's wrong, you afraid of getting lost?" (naturally, the course was well marked out)!

By the third day though I was known as the "GPS Dude" and I couldn't pass or be passed by anyone without them asking how far we had gone, how much farther to go, what is our pace, etc.! One of the gals that was most vocal as to how having a GPS was only a guy thing thanked me by the end of the walk for all the updates!

(As an aside, we had no power available for the three days so I recharged at night using the AA battery pack which worked like a charm!)

[nparker13]

Never doubt the iQ of your iQue...


I was travelling home from upstate new york after a job with a co worker. For fun we set Elizabeth, my iQue, to show us the way home. Unsure of the traffic rules on certain roads in the area, i set her to 'truck' guidance, even though we were in a hightop van. We were trying to go thru the Tappanzee bridge, via the highway connecting it (which must not have allowed trucks)...we drove down this road as Elizabeth kept telling us to turn and exit, i knew something was up, because usually she learns after about 20 minutes of constant nagging out of the little auto nav speaker :mad:. We stopped at a rest area, and i made this 8 waypoint list to try to get Elizabeth to keep us on the highway, but she refused:confused: . Finally, i realized i had her set to truck:eek: ! I must have cursed her off for about an hour before hand, and now my coworker made me apologize to her for being too smart. With a tap of the stylus and a flip of the antenna, we got home perfectly:cool: ....thats why i said, never underestimate the iq of your iQue.:D

-nate

PS i dont think it sounds as good as when it happened, but i guess you just had to be there

PPS i thought the :) would liven up the story...hope you like them :)

[Skata]

After reading other's stories, I have to put my 2 cents in.

I work as tech support around a couple state area. I'm always going to customer's sites in areas not familiar with. Used to print map after map (zoom outs and close ups) to find these places, but not any more.

Makes the job more fun taking off with only Betty's guidenance. I have to politely tell the folks at the locations I am heading to that I really don't need directions. I just confirm that I have their correct address.

Used to use the GPS V with limited coverage, but this thing is GREAT!

[apurvab]

Here's my iQUE story.

Ok, after a lot of hand wringing, I finally bought the Garmin for a week long trip to Canada that my wife and I had been planning. I had never used a GPS before, and didn't know if the Garmin would be worthwhile--boy was I wrong!

Here's the background:

There were several terribly annoying things that went wrong with our trip, and it somehow always involved cards.

1) I had done an electronic payment on our backup credit card to pay off the full balance, so that if needed, we would have it available for emergencies. As luck would have it, there was a bank-related error in the transaction, and the payment never went through.

2) Our ATM card, which had worked flawlessly in places are remove from me (I'm in NJ USA) as New Zealand and Malaysia, refused to work in virtually every ATM in Canada

3) My wife, overly-reliant on card technology, didn't draw out a lot of cash for the trip to be "safe" (Our idea of "safe" travel is apparently very different)

4) And the Coue De Grase: Our new mastercard, which we were going to use as our primary source of money during the course of the trip, got frozen the CC company, because they were too stupid to realize that US customers might actually travel outside the coutry every now and then (even as far away as Canada!). So, like idiots, they pulled the plug Saturday night, which happened to be our last night in Canada (Why they let us use it for the previous 6 days, I have no idea).

Well, to enjoy our last night in Canada, my wife and I had gone out to a nice Ethipian resteraunt. When dinner was over, I handed our new CC to the waitress. Imagine my embarassment when it was rejected. I turned to my backup card - Sorry, maxed out (Plane trips and hotel reservations had been made on that one previously). I open my wallet, and all that was left of the little cash we had brought with us was $50. So there went the last of our money to pay for dinner.

We left the resteraunt, and ofcourse it was raining. We both looked at each other with the dawning realization that we had no cash, no working CC's, And our ATM card was pretty much useless. We had blown our last bit of cash on the meal, and didn't even have enough for a cab ride to the hotel, the last night's hotel bill, or cab fair to the airport the next morning. So we made our way to a pay phone, and dialed the 800 number on the back of the CC. The CS rep informed us that he was very sorry, but without faxing in a ton of ID info to their office, he could not reactivate the card. And even then, it couldn't be done until Monday morning (Argh!!).

So while my wife was on the phone, having a nervous breakdown, I whipped out my iQUE. You see, in the 6 days we had been in Canada, there was exactly one bank's ATM that had actually worked with our ATM card. Only, the only branch I knew of was back in town (about a 30 min cab ride). I pulled up the find, clicked on ATM, and holy smokes! There was a branch of that bank half a mile away! So in the drizzling rain, the iQUE led me to this little hole in the wall ATM booth, and litteraly saved the day, and the vacation!

My wife, never much of a technophile, became convinced that night that it was the best investment we had ever made.

So that is my iQUE story :)

[paul6347]

I have a couple of instances where the iQue saved the day. But I also have the iQue "save" me almost everytime I work. I work driving a limo part time, and it always puts right to the door of the pickup and dropoff locations, but sometimes it's a little off with the addresses, but at least I'm on the block. It "saves" me at work by not having to write down directions that my dispatcher is so used to telling all the other drivers, and I have to repeat me self again, "Just give me the address, I have a GPS, I don't need directions". But that's work and don't count.

The iQue saved me the time we had the blackout on the east coast. It was used as a flashlight, and an alarm clock to get up the next morning for work, since my real alarm clock runs off A/C power and was dead because of the blackout.

The other time was the recent snowstorm in the east. I left work early friday because my job closed early due to the snow. Which was good, because I needed to head to Conneticut. So I left right away, had my iQue, but forgot the external Gilson and my car nav kit (could have kicked myself). So I was off, Whitestone bridge was fine, but the Hutchchson pkw was bumper to bumber. So I got my iQue powered up and put on the dash to get a lock on sats. Once I got a lock, I started routing my way from the next exit using the back roads to 95. Got to 95 no problem, went around that traffic. Going on 95, got right past the tolls and again, bumper to bumper. I looked up on the iQue again, but this time I used the "detour" feature, whiched worked like a charm routing me around 95. I got off the next exit, it wanted me to take route 1, which was all backed up. Here's a tip and an observance. I only found this because I had no external antenna, but if your on a detour routed by the ique, and you get a lost sat. reception, and it recalculates, the detour from the original road is gone. So evidently I lost sats a few times, and it kept wanting me to go back to 95! I stopped routing, and used it's map to route me around route 1, using the side roads through the communites all the way to my destination! I arrived right in front of the door. Took a little while, but it was better than sitting in traffic. All this while using the iQue battery, it was close, but it lasted. Thanks Garmin for the iQue!!