Were you stuck in bumper to bumper traffic the other day when that gravel truck overturned on I-93? Many were but I wasn't. How was that possible? I give all the credit to the wonderful Navigon 2100 GPS. While the actual navigation features are similar to other units on the market, the Navigon 2100 has a few features that set it apart. First, it has a feature called "Reality View" that shows you what lane to be in at complex interchanges. It also has text-to-speech which many units in its price range do not (text-to-speech reads street names so you don't have to look down at the screen to see them on the map). Finally, the feature that saved me from hours in traffic, the Navigon traffic service. This GPS shows traffic trouble spots and will re-route you to a clear route. This feature has saved me hours over the time I have owned the Navigon 2100. With gas prices climbing daily, this GPS has not only saved me time it has saved me money because I am not burning gas from sitting in traffic. I highly recommend the Navigon 2100 GPS.

I have a love/hate affair with my iphone. Here’s what I love about it:

• • 1) I can download content from itunes and watch and/or listen when I’m stuck waiting somewhere.
• • 2) I can find someone’s house on google maps and see it satellite view on my iphone screen.
• • 3) Gotta LOVE the expandable screen with your fingers.
• • 4) – synching someone’s picture with their phone number, so you see them when it rings.

Some things I don’t love:

• • 1) every time I’m talking to someone, the touch screen is so sensitive, it somehow puts them on hold or mute. I have quite a reputation for this now. That, and swearing when it happens.
• • 2) The contact list! Oy vey. With my blackberry I could just start typing in any part of the contact – name or address or company - and the device would start to sort it. Now, I have to know the person’s name and scroll through every contact whose last name starts with the same letter. For example, I have to scroll through a gazillion "O’Connors," "O’Malleys" and "Olivers" to get to "Ouellette." The texting is both good and bad. If you start to type something like "HappyLand," it might assume you meant "happiness." This function is helpful for common misspellings, which can happen frequently with the Lilliputian-sized, touchtone keyboard. Overall, I endure the inconveniences over the blackberry because of the cool factor. It would be an awesome graduation gift. I can see getting the new one with double downloads would be even better because, while you can search anywhere on the web, it does take awhile to download and seems to suck up battery.