If it makes you feel any better, OSM saves the edit history :-) That means the old TIGER is still hiding back there. I have to say that I feel good when I fix some screw up from TIGER. To me, it is the satisfaction you get when you fix up a broken down old car or something. Then again, I might just dislike TIGER from having to use it when I was a Census enumerator. You can really end up in some weird places following what TIGER says are roads.

As for TIGEr predating the 1930s, I think it was made in the 1980s, but it was based off data made in the 1960s, which was probably based on USGS maps and census worker data or something. In theory the census maps are updated every decade, but I know people who were part of doing it a few years ago, and a large portion of their updates just disappeared once they got to the office, and never made it on to the maps we were using, as they should have. I thing USGS is a lot better and more professional at mapping than the Census bureau, but they, unfortunately, don't have the budget of the Census, so they can't update their maps nearly as often.

As some of the other comments have said, I think the big thing is the flexibility that you have with OpenStreetMap. Try downloading maps of your entire county from Google or Mapquest to use when you are out and about. Try fixing or adding something in Google or Mapquest. I also can map where fine details are in places I care about. Things that will never show up in online services. I can also add paths and buildings that may never show up. It is also much easier to data mine OpenStreetMap data than it would be on any other map data. Some people might find it empowering to be able to mark where there are traffic cameras and such things as well.

For those of us in the developed world, I think this empowerment is useful, and gives us more freedom to experiment, but for better examples of empowerment, I would suggest looking at how OpenStreetMap is making maps possible in places where there never have been any. As an example, I would suggest that you might want to look at something like mapkibera.org.

lyx is right on. I also have a slight simplification to add: You needn't multiply by 100. If you do Minutes/60 and add that to degrees, it will get you the same answer. In other words, Minutes/60=0.2648, so add that to 32 to get 32+0.2648=32.2648.