I agree that your suggested GPS would be better for me if I only needed a few of them, but I am using them in sensor nodes and there will be more than a few so the cost savings is significant as I can have some PCBs fabbed and skillet reflow for a few bucks and I probably save $15 per unit.
I mainly posted the results because I asked the question about the maestro units and figured since I had some data I would share my results in case someone else looks at the Maestro units.
wade