I've had a tomtom 300 for 6+ years and love it. One nagging limitation has always been that the tomtom doesn't tell you what side of the road an address is on. This may sound minor but when you are cruising thru a major retail area with strip malls and stores on both sides, it can really help. My Garmin handheld (GPSMap 60Cx, and other Garmins I've seen) DOES indicate which side of road. There are basically only two mapping database companies, Navteq and TeleAtlas. Garmin uses Navteq and tomtom uses TeleAtlas --although I saw an article in WSJ today saying that Garmin had attempted to buy TeleAtlas. Interesting. I think I'd give a slight edge to Garmin, but tomtom invented the category and the popular form factor and has continued to innovate.

So why not just subscribe to one of those TeleNav services on your smart phone? They are actually are very nice. They automatically deliver the latest mapping data AND they automatically check real time traffic and construction data before calculating routes.