Lowrance Announces iWay 250c Automotive GPS

At a sport fishing show in Las Vegas—because, presumably, sport fisherman have to drive to new places just like everyone else—Lowrance Automotive took the wraps off its forthcoming iWay 250c automotive GPS unit. The 250c seems a lot like the existing iWay 250c, offering a 3.5-inch 320 by 240 16-bit touchscreen display with adjustable white LED lighting for viewing in the dark or direct sunlight.
The iWay 250c also comes pre-installed with detailed, turn-by-turn NAVTEQ maps for the U.S. and Canada. The iWay 250c guides drivers with both audio and visual cues (including auto-zooming and route recalculation after a missed turn), street address searching, and routing options which enable users to avoid toll roads, known construction projects, and even left-hand turns. (Left-hand turns not only take more time, they consume more gas: eventually, both commodities translate to real money.). The iWay 250c will also play your MP3s and display JPEG images—just in case, you know, that might be somehow useful.
(OK, confession time: a colleague actually uses a GPS device as backup storage for digital camera images while he's traveling.)
The important information about the iWay 250c may not be it's features, but its price: automotive GPS devices routinely sell for over $500, and frequently flirt with the $1,000 mark. Lowrance says the suggested price for the iWay 250c will be around $350 when they ship in the third quarter of 2006. Just be careful with any suction-based in-car mounting devices: they're illegal in some states!