Printed out a unit from PCNation.com for 495.xx and brought it to them. West Marine had them for $699. They changed there story to we only accept prices from brick and mortar places and not online stores. I stuck with it explaining to them that the man on the phone earlier explained they would even discount the shipping charges so they must accept online prices. In the end i wound up getting it for $25 over there cost ($525) and the transducer at the cost of what garmin.com sells them for which was $69 less than what west marine wanted. Needless to say the manager was not happy.

I will have to go and look at that I thought the shading was a function of te Chart not the unit. Does it have the new garming G2 charts in it?

It takes the Garmen G2 charts but according to the West Marine salesperson it had the shading, all the bouy's, marina's, water depth, etc built in. Unless you need the birds eye photo's and other extras no need to buy the G2 chart. Like I said, I haven't bought one yet, this is all from playing with one in the store so I could be wrong.

Just got a Garmin 545 and it's the best GPS unit I've ever had. The 545S comes with a depth sounder. It's got a great screen that's viewable in direct sunlight and has all channel markers and aids to navigation built in. You can buy a chart to overlay actual satellite imagery if you want.