Yuppie compass or useful tool?

Arkansas was terra incognita for Maria and for me when she moved down here to start her new job last September.
I suggested we get her a GPS unit to help her find her way around, but she declined in favor of maps and a compass.
While many of my BMW-riding friends adopted GPS years ago, I've been a holdout, waiting for the technology to mature and for prices to drop. Earlier GPS units had less memory capacity and a greater dependence upon a computer link to choose and download map data for just the part of the country where the user planned to go.
Now, even the cheaper units come loaded with mapping and point of interest data for the 48 contiguous states.
Still, I held out.
Then we drove to Mountain View, Ark., a few weekends ago in a convoy with Maria's daughter and the daughter's boyfriend. While most of northeast Arkansas is flat with a fairly predictable road grid - the sole exception being Crowley's Ridge - western and northwest Arkansas is mountainous with an amazing hodge-podge of state and federal highways involved in any long drive.
We got along fine with our map on that trip, but it occurred to me it would be a whole lot easier and more fun to have a GPS voice give me a heads-up in advance of every route change. And, I must admit, I used computer mapping software to work out the most direct route.
Circuit City is blowing out a lot of stuff and they had the Garmin 200W on sale at a reasonable price over the weekend.
Besides, we both figured I needed a little retail therapy for my shingles discomfort.
So a day later, I can say I'm impressed. Yes, there are places that don't show up in the Points of Interest lists that I think should be there and no, it's nowhere near as flexible and sophisticated as the new Dash Express that I blogged about a week or two ago. It doesn't know about our little county sideroad. It was very short on documentation - just a fast and dirty Quick Start guide and so far, I've found nothing more detailed on the Garmin website. I did, however, download and install the latest 4 GB update and it seems a bit smarter than it was straight out of the box.
This thing will doubtless prove useful as we explore our new home state and we hope it will save us a few gas dollars by always showing us the shortest route. That is, if I don't burn up gas just driving around and playing with it.

Dash

The Dash Express GPS navigation system has the potential to transform the way we get from point A to point B, make our highway infrastructure more efficient and let government spend our road-building dollars more wisely.
This unit takes GPS to the next step beyond being just a "yuppie compass."
You can get all of the pertinent poop from the Dash website at www.dash.net, but here are the salient points:
The Dash Express is a GPS unit that incorporates internet access through WiFi and cell phone communications. As you drive, it gathers data about your location and speed (or lack of it) and passes that information up to the main server. The server is also getting traffic data from every other Dash unit in the area, as well as from commercial carriers, road sensors and other sources. The result is an accurate traffic picture in real time, constantly changing to reflect changing conditions.
The Dash Express also uses its internet link to access constantly updated information about restaurants, gas stations (including where the lowest gas prices can be found), lodging, businesses, attractions, etc.
Check out the video for a demonstration of how it works.
This is a brand new product, just released this year, so it can only get better. The company promises periodic software updates via the WiFi connection.
The implications of this kind of GPS device are profound. It prompted the moderator of gpspassion.com to write:
I have been writing about GPS for a little over 5 years and have worked for a GPS software company for a year. The reason I mention this is that in all that time I have never made a statement like the one I'm making now: the Dash Express by Dash is, in my opinion, a paradigm changing machine. Automotive GPS will never be the same after the release of this unit. It takes GPS from a "get me from here to there" paradigm, to a paradigm in which GPS is integrated into one's daily life and becomes just another tool to make all sorts of travel and non-travel related stuff easier and more convenient.
In fact, it may be more cost-effective for governmental units to give these things to their residents, either free or subsidized, as a way to make their streets and highways more efficient and to avoid having to spend money on unnecessary road-building.
My only problem with the Dash Express is that it appears to be just for four-wheeled vehicles. When they come out with a weather-proof model that can be operated with a motorcycle-gloved hand, I'll be all over it.