The Yahoo search is great!! That’s where it all ends. I used the Yahoo search to locate a new Target that was only one month old; any other GPS would have not found the location for another year.
Routing with three choices, shows the routes as highlighted outlines but they are difficult to see, if you choose to zoom in you have to wait for the map to redraw which takes longer than it should. I used it to route to the Nashville Airport , I prefer to take the back roads and with my Magellan I can use least use of freeways and with the Garmin I can change the settings to shorter distance ( I wish Garmin would get back to offering least and most use of freeway options the way Magellan and Tom Tom do) anyway-- I chose poorly from the little tiny map and selected the highway, while driving I decided to follow the road signs for the airport and the Dash only wanted me to make a u-turn and get back on the highway. When the Dash finally gave up and rerouted me on the back roads my travel time dropped in half and I was going the way I wanted.
Another limitation- When driving I am used to all other GPS devices zooming in as I drive this way I can see the upcoming streets and know I am getting closer to my turn. The Dash never auto zooms, you don’t realize how much you use this until it does not work. (The Magellan used to give you a countdown bar but it is gone from the new units)
There are no sub categories on the points of interest, if you choose restaurants and then want to look for steakhouse or Chinese you cannot, you only get restaurants. You can use the yahoo search and enter steakhouse which works great, if you drive after performing a yahoo search your distance will update but the list will not. Garmin does this best by constantly updating the list, Magellan does this the worst by forcing you to go back and research, I don’t remember how Tom-tom does this.
The Battery life is poor; in the FAQ they state the unit is large because of the wifi, gprs and batteries to provide extended life. My Garmin and Magellan provide much better battery life at a fraction of the size.
The traffic feature looks ok but I never had a traffic problem and never got to see the real value. If I kept the dash longer maybe I would but I don’t intend to use it anymore.
The good news, most of the issues are software related and can be updated if they have the resources to do it. The subscription fee is not a big deal for those that want updated maps and on line searches; it is well worth it.. The option to push an address to the unit is also great and works well. With some significant software changes this would make a very useful fleet unit keeping track of your vehicles, allowing searches and pushing addresses to field staff.
The bad news , the out of box experience was not a great one, they should have held off a little longer before releasing this unit and made it a better GPS. I would not recommend purchasing this and hope to see one of the other companies add the Yahoo search tool and push addresses.
What I would really like to see is Apple make a GPS with touch features and the best of what everyone else has to offer.

The online status confirms the shipping date is this Friday.

I recommend not using the data plan out of the country, The edge network is so slow and unreliable in the locations I have been which is Poland and Germany you just wait for the data which is unreliable and then get a huge bill.

However if you really must have the international data plan, get the name of the person who activated it, ask them to confirm they updated the record properly. Then call back again and get a different rep and confirm it is activated and the notes from the last rep are there and ask the new rep to confirm you called back in to confirm. This all may sound silly but AT&T is so disconnected from one department and call center to the next you just need to do this and have a record of who you spoke with if you need to challenge your bill over the next month. I was one of the lucky ones who was charged over $5000 for a week in Europe even though I called and rarely used the data plan. It took 4 reps and 6 weeks to get the bill resolved.

Garmin keeps releasing new models and out of the ones I have used they are the most reliable. But why cant they add the routing option back when entering the destination for least use of freeways, most use of freeways, shortest distance ect. All of the other companies GPS like Magellan and Tom Tom have this feature. The early Garmins like the street pilot III and 27XX models have it. As soon as they started with the new models they took this option away which is not only useful but in my opinion a safety issue. Who wants to take a route through a strange town off the main highway and risk your life. You should be able to select most use of highways as an option.

I had this problem a few weeks ago while I was out of town, I brought it to the closest Apple store at the Century City shopping center in California and they touched it and immediately replaced it. The problem I ran into was the AT&T web site was off line for most of the weekend. I could not reactivate the telephone for two days, good thing I still had my Treo.

I already tried removing the SIM card and it does work if you place it in another phone, including data. I moved the IPhone SIM to my Treo and it worked perfectly. I moved the Treo SIM to my IPhone and the IPhone wanted me to reactivate. All of the wifi and IPod features work fine without the SIM installed once the phone has been activated. I am considering canceling the new account and I can move my Treo account to the IPhone and move the SIM between phones during the work week since the email is better on the Treo for now. I will also save $20.00 per month since the data plan is cheaper. The IPhone will cost me $240.0 per year less to use than my Treo.

A friend has most of the exchange issues worked out in using the iPhone but there are some other differences in the Treo I prefer. Little things like return to inbox after discarding a message instead of going to the next does not work. Call forward on no answer is not an option, I forward to the office phone when I can not answer. The Edge network does not allow me to receive emails while on a call, this is great with the Treo on Cingular where available. If you are roaming in Europe where you pay for the amount of data you receive, the Treo will allow you to limit what you receive when in roam mode. I limit each email to a preview of 1k, there does not appear to be a way to control this with the Iphone.

Just adding on. We are now almost 17 hours into this mess and here is the latest correspondence I received from AT&T..

I called at about 15 hours and they blamed the problem on iTunes.

I just got this after waiting over 16 hours.

We are currently processing your order. Your order number is XXXXX
You will receive an additional e-mail when your order is complete that will provide further instructions to activate your iPhone.

I just posted my experience and it was not at all what you indicated I am now 12 plus hours moving a phone from the same account within AT&T.

The blame belongs with AT&T or Apple for the delay. This is not the fault of any other carrier.

Second, I placed an unauthorized sim in another iPhone and the phone has to be reactivated to work but all of the other features including wifi and iPod work fine.

Here is my experience.

I went to the AT&T store they had only received 30 phones and they were gone almost as quickly as they arrived. I went over to the Apple store in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania where with a friend proceeded to purchase 4 phones. There was no line, the store was packed and they had plenty of iPhone. They also continued to reload the draws where the phones were stored.

This is where the frustrations begin. After getting home I logged on to activate the phone I purchased for my wife, this was about 11 am. After multiple failed attempts trying to connect to the iTunes server for activation I was able to go through the menu choices to move my wife’s phone number over from her existing AT&T account to the new iPhone. After completing the process I received an email that AT&T is now processing your activation, you will get an email when this is complete. It is now 12 hours later and the process is not completed.

I called AT&T customer support last night and asked why it was taking so long; remember I was going from AT&T to AT&T. The answer they gave me was somewhat lame but they told me the process could take up to 24 hours. When I complained and said if I had known I would have never started the process they tried to compare my surprise to a car taking out a power pole and me unexpectedly loosing my power in my house, how I would have no control over the promise. I explained I have a generator, they said you know what I mean. I am not making any of this up.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, my friend tried to port his number from an AT&T business account, which is our company account to his new iPhone, the message said he could not use the phone with the account.

The next step was to activate a new number on my next iPhone, I went through the process, iTunes found my account and the phone came to life within minutes. Still my wife’s phone is waiting for activation.

This morning I decided to play around with the sim cards between my Treo and my iPhone. I removed the SIM card from my TREO and placed it in my iPhone. A message came up and said Incorrect SIM please connect to iTunes to reactivate the iPhone. However I was able to use all of the features of the iPhone including the wifi access, I just could not make any calls.

Next I moved the original iPhone sim to my Treo phone, no problem the phone and data worked perfectly. What I found interesting about this is the data plan is almost $20.00 per month less on the I phone and I can use it in my Treo.

Across town, my friend fired up his iPhone with a new phone number on a personal account, activation was available in minutes; still my wife’s phone is waiting for activation.
Another frustration is being forced to sign up for a 2 year plan on an existing phone when I paid full price for the phone. I am considering canceling the new account and I will be left with a very cool iPod with wifi capability.

My wife just walked in and reminded me her phone still does not work.