While at Fry’s today, I came across a cart full of discontinued (at least by Fry’s) and open box GPS units on closeout. I managed to snag a Sony NV-U44 (sans cables, software or mounting hardware) for $69- not too bad of a deal.
I immediately tried out the unit in my car and I was moderately pleased with interface and somewhat amused by the absence of POIs for things I would look for (Fry’s, MicroCenter, etc).
At home, I downloaded the Sony Nav-U desktop software and the 1.01 firmware update. I also noticed a banner ad for map updates for my Sony GPS unit; The update for 2008 to 2009 map data is $99- or $30 more than I paid for the original GPS unit…
A quick internet search revealed that there is one disc that supports all of the NV-U94T/U84/U83T/U74T/U73T/U44 units. Furthermore, the forum post was kind enough to provide RapidShare direct download links and a torrent file for download of the disc.
Another interesting piece of software that cropped up during this quest is the RapidShare Downloader form Major Share. This is an automated download tool that will watch the system clipboard for RapidShare download links, queue them up, and try to automatically download them (pausing a minute between downloads to allow the time limits to expire). The downloader also allows for filename search of files hosted on RapidShare.
Brooskie's Log Book 