A comment from the original linky:

I love Google Maps and use it for most things, however I travel into the mountains and wilderness a lot where there is no cell phone reception. Google's offline maps are only good for simply viewing the map but directions, navigation and search are not an option while offline. For this reason I require an offline navigation program like this one by Garmin.


A year or more ago, I tried saving off-line maps with Google Maps. It really didn't work very well at all while driving in a new area. And, of course, search is useless without a data connection. There are other off-line maps things with like downloadable POIs that can fill in some of the missing pieces, but the ones I tried didn't work very well for me either.

I understand that (nearly) ubiquitous data connections are coming and we're in a transition. It just seems to me that buying a dedicated $210 Garmin box every few years still makes sense. It would be great to have the same off-line functionality available in our phones, but I don't think we're going to be there for quite a while. Maybe once Google's Skybox satellites are going that will change that a little faster.

Am I too pessimistic?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.