Re: Google Earth vs Garmin 2610

Seagull wrote...
Maybe it's beyond you to understand that there are some people
that wish to find their way to places ON ROADS that are not waypointed on
the rather dubious maps included with these devices and are nowhere near
a
convenient MacDonalds to give you something to aim for.

In which case, a street navigator like the 2610 is not for you. Instead
of expecting every product to mold to your ideal, why not evaluate the
products that are actually designed to meet your requirements? You're
applying an apple test to an orange.

Why you consider that the expectation of the most basic of all GPS receiver
functionality that is included in even the most primitive of Garmin
handhelds to be an unreasonable ideal is unfathomable - It's a feature that
Garmin had to REMOVE from the specifications when upgrading from their
original rock-bottom models to produce sophisticated in-car navigation
solutions! Why on earth do you consider that the identification of a
destination from the national maps used by even the most technically
inexperienced of British public to be too specialised to include in a
"Street Navigator"? This is a feature so trivial in implementation and
fundamental to navigation that it should be assumed that only an idiot would
design a navigational GPS receiver without it! But then we are talking
about Garmin designers here of course!

Have you actually tried to evaluate the detailed capabilities of a Garmin
product based on the available information? It's almost impossible. For
example the 2720 does apparently allow you to enter geodesic coordinates -
although only WGS84 Lat/Lon - but it's unlikely that you would realise this
from the manual unless you were very lucky, as it's only mentioned in a
side-box to a graphic in a very cryptic sentence. The only reason that I
realised that the functionality existed was by reading the entire update
history on the firmware download page, where it said for ver 2.30: "Lat, Lon
position entry using the product's keyboard didn't work correctly". Knowing
that the functionality existed, I was eventually able to identify a cryptic
line in the manual but many important features are added to Garmin products
in firmware upgrades that never make it into a manual!

And, yes, the 2610 can tell you where you are. Just in the WGS84
datum.

And what bloody use is that I ask you? Unless of course Lat/Lon is the most
common US map coordinate format, in which case this would be a simple case
of Garmin putting up two fingers to the rest of the world - and not for the
first time.

Saying it's "rubbish" just because it doesn't meet your
narrow definition is hardly a fair assessment. Or maybe it's beyond
/your/ ability to understand that the vast majority of users who buy
a StreetPilot series GPS just want to navigate on roads from A to B
using the provided map data, and it's quite good at that. For this
usage model, customizing the map datum is a non-sequitor.

It's your definition of a unit with severely restricted input functionality
that is seriously narrow. I would rather suggest that the vast majority of
your hypotherical users only know how to navigate in this manner because
that's what the user guide has told them - is that really a good reason to
dumb the product down in this way. Anyway your comment is wrong - the vast
majority of users want to be able to navigate between A and B using any
information that has been provided for the purpose - this can be address,
postcode or map reference. For rural sites it's only the map reference that
can be guaranteed to be of any use and this is frequently supplied for all
manner of reasons. For example, one of the most popular family weekend
pastimes in Britain is visiting country houses, castles, parks etc and both
the National Trust and English Heritage Visitor's Handbooks provide the
Ordnance Survey Grid Reference of every single attraction. The same is true
of almost all nature reserves, bird sanctuaries etc etc etc. You may be
happy with a unit that is only designed to work properly in towns and cities
but I would want something very much less restricted in its capabilities. I
certainly don't want to navigate to the nearest town using a Garmin
Automotive Receiver and then have to negotiate the last few miles with the
help of my yellow etrex!

However Garmin now seem to have realised that they were wrong, since in
later Street Navigation receivers (eg 2820) they have re-introduced the
functionality of selection of coordinate system and datum and the ability to
enter a destination in this format. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult
to determine which other models may or may not contain this functionality -
short of downloading all the user manuals and update histories and studying
them in very fine detail.

David






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