I have been swamped, so have still not written the update. It is high on the list... But, in summary, I would not yet bet my life on SPOT. SPOT offers a lot of nifty features, and commercial distress alerting with these many features, in generic terms, has the potential for offering advantages to many, but in terms of robustness and reliability in my testing and that associates who have tried it, it has not proven itself to be as good as a 406 MHz beacon. We've numerous instances when it should have gotten though in tracking mode, but didn't and for long periods of time. We have numerous instances where in alerting mode it did not go through. Difficult, but not terrible situations, and ones I am confident a 406 M<Hz signal would have been picked up. The reliance on GPS for position is another significant downside. If you know the GPS will not be challenged where you travel, this may not be a factor.

Moreover, their GEOS call center is still not integrated adequately into the SAR system, IMO. I will be attending a SPOT press day at GEOS early next month and will perhaps have a better feel for this after attending.

This is not to say that SPOT won't likely work in most distress instances within its design range. It will save lives (has already) and with a low price point for initial purchase is bound to get better market penetration, which will also result in lives saved. This is all good. It may well be adequate for many people. However, I'm not yet willing to bet lives on "may be adequate for most" at this point. So, for the present time, my recommendation continues to be for a 406 MHz PLB unless you are confident that your use won't be very challenging to SPOT. In that case, SPOT may be a more affordable (at least in the short term) answer and/or the tracking and other features SPOT offers may be worthwhile in and of themselves.

I am not convinced that the HELP feature (a call to friends instead of SAR) has all that much real world utility as currently implemented. In many situations, you cannot go out, get into some sort of undefined trouble, then hit HELP, and expect it to solve the problem. May work OK on a road trip, but perhaps not so well on a backpacking trip. It will take some significant planning on your part to make that a practical option. And, the Check OK thing can be handy, BUT what happens when your mom doesn't get the expected OK signal from you because SPOT didn't do its thing? Because it is one way comm only, this has the potential to create unintended consequences.