They are saying the Eclipse 8099 (the fancy compass with the rubber "boot") doesn't have a global needle. Clearly the Voyager is a global needle.

Sorry, my mistake. When I read that, my mind registered the 9020 as the compass in question, not the eclipse.
I get myself confused easily between the Silva-Se local model names, Bruntons slightly different model names.
When talking 'Brunton 8099' in the posts with Brad i opened Bruntons site for refference.
I usually dont reffer to my 9020 by its number except when posting here to clarrify the model I'm talking about. What was the movie that said "I have a name, not a number" ...
So to me its my Voyager <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I usually do fine in the woods or mountains but last time I was in Manhattan it was comforting to know I could count on my map and compass skills instead of the good humor of New Yorkers to point me in the right direction.

Whenever I take the train to downtown Chicago - which I don't do very often - I find that the most confusing time is when I "pop" out of the train station and try to figure out which way is N/S/E/W. I really wish every train station exit had compass rosepoints in the ground (using tiles or brick). Then you could just look down and quickly get a sense of where north is.

I'm heading downtown on Tuesday to take my kids to a museum (Science & Industry or Field - not sure which), and I will surely bring a little compass - probably the little Brunton 9020 - it is pretty pocket friendly.

I also brought that compass along with when my family went to do the Disney thing in Florida. The kids carried them too. My wife just rolled her eyes. The first thing I did was to find a spot in each park where I could determine where true-ish north was on the map. I'd then fold the map so edges were N-S. From then on, when I got turned around, it was very easy to find directions.

Like I said, when I got lost in Taipei is was pretty darn frightening. I had bad jet lag, nothing looked familiar, it was hot & humid, it was dark, and I didn't know if there were safety issues. Having a very simple GPS and a compass on which I could take a bearing would have solved the problem VERY quickly.

Right now I have a Garmin GPS III+. It works fine, but is a tad heavy at about 9 oz. I'm thinking of getting a Garmin Geko at 3 oz. Hmmmm, I need to check to see if the Geko screen is backlit.

Ive posted a picture of the little Suunto compass out of the K&M Matchcase for you to have a look at in this post.
Little Suunto Picture