Re: HELP with GPS Selection

On Sun, 18 Dec 2005 09:21:41 -0500, "Bob L" <bob_lloyd@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>>
>> As a general GPS, it SUCKS compared to my III+. I wonder if the folks
>> that designed it ever used a GPS receiver for anything other than
>> navigating.
>>
>> Now, I'm not complaining about the hardware.

Well, I have a gripe about that too. How hard would it have been to
add or make available a lanyard attachment to the Quest? It has the
grip-ability as a bar of soap.

My two earlier Garmins had a lanyard ring. My Quest has one now also.
All it took was a small stainless washer, a file, a drill, and a small
ring from ACE Hardware. My Quest rarely leaves my pocket without the
cord being around my neck. I'm not particularly clumsy and 'I've
never dropped a camera either for the same reason.

>>With a gentle facelift
>> in the software department, it could be a real winner for both tasks.
>>

>
>My previous GPS was a III+ too. Great unit and it has a few offroad
>features that the Quest does not - but nothing I really miss. I thought I
>would continue to use the III+ for hiking and geocaching but I'm using the
>Quest exclusively now. What additional software features do you think it
>needs?
>

I use my GPS primarily for car-camping and traveling. We are often
traveling for a couple weeks at a time.

Here's a few things missing from the Quest that would have made me
look a lot harder at other products if I had a clue first.

1. The number of displayable fields is insufficient. Changing an
existing field to see another is crude. The GPS III had 3 pages with
displayable fields PLUS a trip computer.

2. It is impossible to display the current date. I'd hate to guess
how many times I used it while traveling when we lost track of the
date.

3. Date and time are not attached to Waypoints generated. Use of a
track log is not an acceptable means of telling when you marked a
specific point.

4. The number of waypoints used/remaining are not listed. Now how
hard is that?

5. While there seems to me to be an absurd number of tiny icons to
attach to waypoints types, I could live with them if their function
were listed as I pointed to one or selected one. You can only tell
what the function is once you have selected one and then go to the
Delete-By-Icon page.

6. The display of the current Lat/Lon are almost unusable due to the
small font. Try navigating to a feature in an area without mapped
roads and trying to use the lat lon display as you drive.

7. The menu system is clunky. The GPS III had a menu system that was
well thought out. Often used items were accessible with a minimum of
keystrokes. It's like the folks that designed this didn't have a
clue why the III menus were designed the way they were.

8. The GPS info page is highly usable as a compass, but the "Dumbo
Ears" on the satellite icons make it difficult to see the useful stuff
on the page. If they had used the same micro-font on the satellite
numbers and replaced the satellite icons with something more
reasonable in size, it would be a breeze to use. At least the red
direction pointer on the circle could have been large enough so it
wasn't obscured by the satellite icons.

9. I've wanted to have the moon rise and set displayed as a field
since I found out that Magellan had it available during the era of my
GPS II. The Quest displays the moon position on the satellite page,
if you can see it for the Dumbo ears, but it isn't available as a
displayable piece of data.

There isn't anything in the above list that hasn't been available in
earlier receivers, except possibly the moon times. There are a few
things that survived the cut that I would have gladly traded for any
of the items above, but I don't think tradeoffs are necessary in a
product with a such a wide range of uses. Most of the items above
could be added as options outside of the configuration Garmin deems
the default, how ever simplistic they intend it to be.

I wonder how the PC community would react if Microsoft started
removing options from it's consumer op-systems because they didn't
think many of it's audience needed them any more or weren't bright
enough to make use of them?

Doug


.

Relevant Pages

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