Last night Garmin announced a slew of new mobile products, and I must say: WOW! Check out the Colorado, a high-end handheld designed for driving, hiking, boating, and"¦um"¦multimedia, location-aware, gaming/educational experiences! The interface is neither old Garmin handheld nor new Garmin marine, instead featuring that big 'Rock 'N' Roller' thumb wheel/cursor rocker, and two soft keys. The wheel brings up a spinning menu system (seen right) that's a bit like Furuno's RotoKey. The hardware specs sound spectacular: bright 3", 65k color, 240 x 300 pixel screen; "high sensitivity" GPS (perhaps like G's new N2K sensor, which apparently can be mounted under some decks); 15 hours on 2 AAs; 2–axis compass; altimeter and temp sensor; waterproof to IPX7; and, dig this, ANT wireless for sharing routes, etc. (and who knows what to come). There's also a USB port, an SD slot, and lots of flash memory. Aside from the amount of that memory, Colorado seems to be a single hardware/interface platform which comes in four models, starting with the $500 base model 300 and moving through three $600 models pre-loaded with 3D topos (the 400t), inland waterways (400i), or coastal BlueCharts (400c). But I bet some boaters will buy an "i" or a "t", figuring they can use their existing BlueChart G2 cards for marine use. It looks like Colorado may also work with older BlueChart CD-based charts, or any other Garmin cartography including photo maps. And it can play Wherigo files, that very new "experience" thing I mentioned, which might enable extraordinary "cruising guides". There's lots more Colorado info at this Garmin site, as well as at this special Garmin CES preview (which includes several other new products, like the nuvi 880, with might-trickle-down features). My first impression is that Colorado may represent a new generation of handheld plotter power"¦but then I stumbled on the DeLorme Earthmate PN-20, which can even show NOAA raster charts. Oh my.