On my 550??Put in a zip, push select, shows (enter house number), push done, shows (enter street), push done, shows select street. Here the only options are to (1) select a street or hit the back button. If you hit a street name or number (there's a lot of street names and numbers to scroll through, even in a small town), it takes you to the lowest number on that street, select a particular number and you go to that address. I really don't see the usefulness because you're still making a multitude of entries. You might as well just put in the address to begin with.
That is because the GPS is not searching and locating the specific address by the zip code. You are norrowing the search field for the GPS yourself with every entry that you make. With the postal code system used in Canada (and I know it works this way in the U.K. as well) the GPS does all of this work for you. You only need to enter the postal code and the house number. The GPS locates the city and the street itself- you do not need to enter any of this information. It is a really nice feature as it makes entering addresses so much easier and faster and eliminate any errors. This is handy when you are doing it on the side of the road for example. Give it a try with the below example and you will see what I mean.
If you are to meet someone at the following restaurant;
St Hubert
1180 Rue de la Gaucheti?re
Montr?al, QC H3B 2S2
If you enter St Hubert you get pages of them with multiple variables with the dash, without the dash, abbreviated as ST, ST. or spelled Saint, and multiple other variables, etc. If you are unfamiliar with the area which is correct?
If you search by address you get two possibilities- which is correct?
To further complicate matters this street has been renamed and if you do not know that?
With the postal code search functionality none of the above matters. Even the street name change will not affect successfully navigating to this address as the postal code does not change regardless of how many times the street is renamed.
To find this address in Quebec all you need to enter is the postal code- H3B2S2, and then the street number- 1180. It finds all of the rest its self. It even finds both street names but it doesn't matter which one you select because the postal codes are so specific that the location is correct regardless of which street option you choose.
The GPS will ask you to enter the province but only if it is different from the province of your last search. Usually it is not as you are in an area for a while so you do not need to enter this data after the first search. It only needs the postal code and the street number. It will then find the city, the correct burrough within the city if there is more than one possibility, the correct street regardless of name, spelling, etc. It does all this its self without you having to enter anything but the postal code and street number.
In Mapsource it is even easier as Mapsource doesn't care which country or province the address is in. It finds this as well just by the postal code. I find that it just makes finding and entering places much easier and wondered if there was a way to simply enter a zip code and street number for U.S. addresses.