I find that your reason to not purchase lifetime updates is not a reason at all. In fact your post seems to highlight that the GPS you purchased is the reason for your discontent, not the map itself.

Last year I received a 1300LM for my birthday, and it wasn't much of an upgrade from the 200W that I had before that. The 1xxx units were harshly criticized because of their small internal memories, and justifiably so. Garmin at the time did not help the situation because neither MapInstall nor their automated map installer could see the SD/MicroSD installed in the slot and thus would not offer to install the map to it.

While I am fortunate to know my way around MapInstall and manually transfer the maps to the SD/MicroSD, I am not Garmin's average end user. The average end user is not as likely to know how to transfer the maps manually, and many of them don't even bother to update their maps because they feel it's too difficult, too time consuming, or both.

Garmin recently revised their map installer to take SD/MicroSD cards into account. Prior to the revision, you would need MapInstall to place the maps onto the SD/MicroSD, which for the non-tech savvy is a rather daunting prospect. Now, if there isn't enough space in the internal memory to fit the entire map, the entire map will be copied to the SD/MicroSD.

They haven't fixed MapInstall, but the average Garmin end user likely isn't going to play around with MapInstall.

Speaking of the SD/MicroSD, all nüvi devices in the United States support SD/MicroSD cards up to 16GB in size. This actually is far more than most Garmin devices prior to the 2012 lineup are likely to ever need. And with the proper size, you never need worry about splitting maps between internal and external memory. In fact, I stopped splitting maps some time ago on my 200W. For that unit I kept the 2009 maps on the internal memory and have the 2012.40 maps on the SD Card.

From what I recall, the 2012 units have sufficient internal memory to not require a card for quite some time. If I recall, the nüvi 30, 40 and 50 have at least 4GB of internal memory. That should be plenty to go around for quite a few map updates, but if not you still will have the MicroSD option for those devices.

Lifetime updates are a good idea since they pay for themselves within six months of purchase.