Gadget_Cacher

And that is unfortunate, but that could have been viewed as not from normal wear and tear. Everyone will have different xperiences with any company. It all depends on how you approach the CSR and on th CSR you talk to.

Word of mouth advertising is the strongest type and its free...garmin did the right thing. As others have said HE WANTED TO BUY a replacement. If he told them the story and they felt that he shouldnt have to buy one that is their poragative. For all any of us know there could have been a lot of defective suction cups and garmin knows about this hence why they so redily replaced it. They sent him a 20 dollar part after he purchased a 200+ dollar product from them. Now in the future when ever the OP needs a new GPS or if some one asks him what they should get he will buy and recomend garmin. So for the price of a mount they have just made themselves more money. They didn't have to do this, and i am sure they know how to run their business better than you do and they chose to do this...bravo garmin.

Yes, you are being unreasonable. Of all people I am surprised to hear members of the geocaching community, who tend to be more environmentally concious, complaining about something like this. Also, it's the 21st century...I am not sure what products you buy, but thousands come with soft copy manuals. Get the manual on disc, load it up in Adobe and print. Problem solved. If you paperless cache you don't have to print anything out. I simply used the mobi reader program (free) to take the pdf files and put them on my hand held. That way i have the entire manual at my disposal with out having to carry a manual around. Just wanted to give you an option other than printing the manual out.

I haven't used direct route, but i believe there is an option that allows you to pick "fastest" route and "fewest miles" route. If one is selected try switching to the other. I dont know if it will work, but may be worth a shot.

One really nice thing about mapsend and my explorist 400....i download the file from this site or from a pocket query and i load it into map send save it to my gps and turn on the unit select my geocache file and presto there are the caches marked with icons that are used on this website as well as their actual names.

double post sorry

To heck with that...WHAT ABOUT THE GEO WALRUSES????? Why does EVERYONE ALWAYS forget the walruses. They are such an oppressed geocaching community.

you also have to realize a lot of other countries pay much higher taxes and a lot include health care as a part of that..some places do it well but most places even though the health care system is paid for by the government there are massive waiting lists for critical procedures as well as the over all quality is minimal. and generally frivolous health care lawsuits dont happen other places like they do here. A lot of america is sue happy trying to get that quick dollar.

The US is one of if not THE largest consumer in the world...Everyone wants to sell to us so they, at times, give the Us a better deal. As far as gas..maybe we are better at negotiating prices.

i don't know if garmin is the same as magellan on this, but with the explorist series you have to go to the map setup and select a geocaching file. Once that is done the symbols show up. As i said i dont know if garmin works this way but its worth a shot

Something else to try.....if you are on a network or if you have other devices connected to your computer it is possible that the etrex is trying to assign itself a drive letter that is already in use. to check this..right click my computer...click on manage..once the new window pops up select disk management....look in there too see if you notice your etrex there....if you do see it note the drive letter designation that it has and then double click on my computer. If that drive is already being used go back to your computer management window...right click on the unit and click change drive letter and paths. Select a drive letter that is not in use and click ok on any warnings. If that is the problem you are having this should fix it and you computer should recognize it no problem now.

silly question, but have you tried powering it up when connected to external power and no batteries in it at all. Also if you have an SD card have you tried removing that and trying to power it up? I would sugest hooking it up to external power with out the battery in it at all, also maybe hook it up to your computer. Possibly the screen is dead, but it is still powering up...hooking it up to your computer may tell you if this is the case.

the connector cord should run down the length of the unit. if you have it going out the top of the unit you will only get external power and it will not talk to your computer nor will it charge the battery.

geo-U doesnt have this information that i can find at least

Thanks for the responses so far...I did look at geo-u, but i must have missed that part. haffy...i do use that, but i am one of those geeks who wants to know every last inch of my gadget so i can ensure i am using it to its full potential.

What is a good resource for me to learn all the ins and out about how to understand GPS coordinates? I understand that i need to get to said point ot find a cache or what ever, but i have no clue what bearing means ( i understand what the word means, but when my gps says my bearing is 146 degrees i have NO idea what that means) Basically i am looking for the end all be all resource for understanding all these numbers and such. Thanks

Maybe i am odd but i dont have that problem, of course i am using Topo 3D to upload my geocaching points and not the magellan geocache software. Maybe this si something special with the 400 but i can click on the geocache point on my gpsr and i can view basic data about the cache, mark it found, and even view hints.

That is one thing i hate about the whole GPS thing....you spend X ammount of dollars on a GPS and you still have to spend another 50-200.00 on maps that will actually make it use able in any real sense. Maybe its just me being cheap, but i do think that stuff should come with all gps units or at least be a small price. Heck even just a coupon to get the software cheaper with the purchase of a new unit would be fine for me, but geeze 150 for topo 150 for city routes 150 for this 150 for that...it all adds up REALLY fast.

as far as the screen flashing go to start -> run -> then type cmd This will bring up a dos command prompt. At that point try it again at least this time you will see if there are any error messages. Edit: Didn't read your entire post, dumb me, but basically what you did was run the transfer but because you did it from the run prompt it only opened the window it needed for as long as it needed it then it closed the window. Hence the screen flash. I am very glad you got your gpsr working again thats awsome.

I have been looking at the garmin website a lot. I have gotten somewhat paranoid about my magellan with all the stuff on this forums. So here is my question to you: If i were to purchase a garmin unit what would i need to be able to get the really detailed map data such as the topographical data and the side street data. Currently I use mapsend topo 3d USA and it gives me so much information i don't know what to do with it all. It even has the mom and pop restaurants in my area as a part of the poi database and i am not even in a major city of any sort. The only thing i dont like is the lack of auto routing, granted i can buy software for that, but its more an annoyance than a need. So far i haven't really seen a version of the map source that does all that..of course i could just be missing something. Thanks

some one posted how to get your base map back in another thread..here is the link: http://www.imhz.com/2006/05/my-explorist-is-screwed.html

one difference i have noticed by looking at both websites is price. The magellan does seem to offer more advanced features, such as SD card, at a cheaper price point than the garmin. In all honesty if i had 500.00 to blow i would have gotten the garmin 60csx...some on in my family has that and from the few minutes that i got to use it i liked it. But since i couldn't justify throwing 500.00 at this i went with the magellan. There are nice garmins on their site, but the cheaper ones lack the features that the like priced magellans offer.

for vista..the best fix i can think of if the "run as admin" doesn't work would be to just use an SD card reader to upload your stuff. Of course if your gps doesnt have the SD card capability then this wont work.

one thing i can think of is when you are putting your unit into USB file transfer mode are you selecting SD card or internal memory. You can choose either or, but once in a selected area you cannot talk to the other with out changing it again on the gps.

I just got the explorist 400 and i love it. With the SD card i can save a lot of detailed map info the lith-io batter lasts a long, long time, with the ability to throw in some AAA's if needed. The map send software, for me at least, has been great. spent 10.00 on it and I have added so much info to it since i have the extra memory available that i dont even have to worry about going back to my computer. As the previous poster said you can sawp between different GPSr units with the SD and you can also switch your maps on the 400 in no time. Just upload what ever you need to the SD card and in a few button presses you have whatever map you want in full detail right at your finger tips. I am personally glad that i got this unit. Of course i know little to nothing about the garmin units so i really would like to hear more about them. I do know that the legend series just want for me since it doenst ahve the SD card capability.