Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Or at least they were when I bought mine. The one I got was a "returned
from the Gulf - no longer needed for a war" unit. It still works well.

That'll be a nice bit of provenance for the Antiques Roadshow in a few
years time.

It was really the start of GPS as a consumer product. Both Trimble and
Garmin rushed thousands of handsets out to US troops when the USA
discovered they didn't have enough military units. At the same time the
US removed Selective Availability from the satellite signal and improved
the accuracy of the units. After the ruckus finished they took the
decision not to degrade the position fix again. Returned units were
refurbed and sold onto the domestic market since they didn't contain any
classified technology. The proces fell from the original £1500-2500 for
a Magellan hand-held GPS to the £200 mark at which point I bought mine.

The bluetooth GPS I bought for £20 a few months back is actually a
better unit than the 12XL, but I like the 12XL features when I'm sailing
a boat.