By personal experience, you can't go wrong with Garmin. The format of the units have increased greatly, they do so much more now at a reasonable price. Personally, I don't like the GPS units themselves for mapping strange enough, not that there is anything really wrong with them. I took many road trips to parts unknown with my xterra clan, so I set up my truck to handle the gps and my laptop to work together. Nothing like having a big screen to follow and you navigate new towns and sites. I use the laptop during the trips anyway for pictures and information anyway.
I'd also suggest Miscrosoft Streets and Trips, a real cheap program, but it covers the states as well as Canada, and has to be the easiest to navigate and alter, yet light enough that you can load everything into the laptop so you no longer need the CD's.