gallet

I can't see that I'm doing anything wrong here so maybe it's another software bug. I set a waypoint to have a proximity alarm, plus an 'approaching proximity' alarm. I also have the 'proximity alarm' checkbox, checked. So everything seems set up. However when I set a waypoint to have a proximity alarm, neither of the two alarms sounded (both of them are quite distinctive), only a single 'beep' when I got to the correct spot. The dotted circle that indicates a proximity alarm was visible and the beep went off exactly at the right time. This appears to be a bug, I'm running 2.30 firmware. Can anyone confirm these results, or tell me what I'm doing wrong. Thanks.

1 Don't even think about old technology. 2 The best 3 Same as 2, but without electronic compass ridiculous to buy to save $20

You can see a good comparison of the coverage and brightness if you use babelfish to translate this page then it appears that the HCx is brighter at 50% than the 60CSx is at 100%! You can also clearly see that the HCx is covering more of the map.

In fact a few months ago I bought a Venture and had it shipped to Australia. It still had a waypoint marked "home" in it, (doesn't everyone) and I looked up the coordinates on maps.google for fun and sent the seller an email and told them where they lived and asked them how accurate it was. They replied that I was spot on.

Yes the dashboard car thing might be the only instance where the larger screen would help but you'd only have to put the HCx 10% closer to get the same effect. However there *is* one other important consideration to take into account, and that is if you use it in a car then you will be operating off the car battery which means that you can have the screen illuminated. The HCx screen is quite a bit brighter than the 60CSx, some people are reporting the 60 is almost unusable in bright sunlight. So you will have to weigh up the slightly larger screen of the 60/76 against the *much brighter* screen of the HCx. My guess is that much brighter is going to be more legible than slightly bigger especially as much of the information is colour coded. Probably an in situ test is the only way to resolve it for you.

My experience is that my VistaHCx is within a few metres of what maps.google indicates. What map datum are you using? I use decimal degrees. I also find it to be accurate with topo maps providing I set the correct map datum. As a check the first thing I would do is set your unit to read DD.DDDD (decimal degrees) and check it against www.maps.google try an intersection near where you live.

If you are interested in the basemap coverage then that is down to the pixels. As you can see from this photo both screens use the same amount of pixels to describe things, the numbers are bigger on the 60 because the pixels are bigger but if you count how many pixels are in the same numbers you will see they are the same. This will also obviously apply to maps as well as there are too few pixels to describe objects in any other way, you can't have pixel dithering on such a tiny screen. So the minimum line you can draw is one pixel. In this case the HCx will show more of the map due to the fact that it displays 176 pixels across the width against the 60/76's 160 pixels across the width. So the HCx will show 10% more map on the width. With regards to the height the 60/76 has 240 pixels against the HCx's 220 pixels so the 60/76 would display about 16% more map top to bottom. But the 60/76 has a menu bar across the top of the map which takes up about 20 pixels of wasted space which brings it down to 220, the same as the HCx. So to sum up the HCx will show 10% more map coverage than the 60/76 and both units will display the same map coverage top to bottom. But although the 60/76 shows less map, it does show it a bit bigger, the solution is the hold the HCx one inch closer. The only circumstance where the bigger screen on the 60/76 would be useful is the artificial situation where you hold the gps as far from you as you possibly can but can still read it. In this instance you could have the 60/76 a bit further away. But no one would ever use a gps by holding it at the absolute extremity of distance that they possibly could.

"However, I am still confused on the display and pixel issue. Because the screens on the 60/76 are larger than the Vista then you should get more "real estate" when viewing maps but the clarity won't be as good?" No you don't get more real estate. Roughly speaking the real estate is the same. Again roughly speaking the 60/76's have 10% bigger screens but 10% worse resolution (measured as pixels/cm not total pixels) so while the screen is 10% bigger you need to view it from 10% further away to achieve the same clarity and viewing it further away effectively reduces the size. If you magnify the screens you will see that letters and objects on the screen are constructed of the same number of pixels but the 60/76 pixels are bigger. Size of the screen is not 'real estate' by itself. For example if a 17" computer monitor could only be at 1280x960 resolution and a 20" monitor could only be at 800x640 resolution, then the 20" monitor would not have more real estate at that resolution. The size of he screen only equals more real estate, IF and only IF the respective pixel resolution is the same which is not the case between the 60/70 and HCx. The 60/76 has worse resolution. The net result is that as far as real estate goes the 60/76 and HCx are as near as dammit, the same. But the HCx has a much brighter screen, which means you can view it in very bright sunlight and it achieves this with better battery life too. Note: when comparing resolution do not look at the total pixel count but look at the pixel per centimeter count. One other point to note is that the 60/76 screens have a slightly better height to width ratio than the HCx screens which would give them a tiny bit more real estate but this bit extra is wasted by using a menu bar across the top of the screen so that when you are on the map page a big chunk of real estate is used up on the 60/76 telling you that er...you are on the map page, brilliant.

Do not buy the Venture HC, Garmin are messing with your mind. Notice how they sell the Venture Cx and the Venture HC why do they do this? You can choose the high sensitivity reciever OR the removable memory and better battery life. But not both. Don't play Garmin's silly model games, bypass the VentureHC and get either the LegendHCx or VistaHCx The Venture HC is listed as 14 hours battery life, that's a joke. You can get the Legend HCx for just $30 more than the VentureHC and look what you get for your $30, unlimited microSD card memory and almost double the battery life, double the stored waypoints and routes, plus full auto routing if you want to put detailed maps in.

In every test I've seen the new Media Tek chips in the H series eTrex outperform the SirfStarIII, not by much though. Before the new H series came out the SirfStarIII in the 60CSx was so much better that it wasn't worth considering other features like battery life. But now that the VistaHCx is at least as good a receiver as the 60CSx then you now need to look at things that were previously unimportant, like better battery life on the Vista and much brighter screen on the Vista and more compact overall package. If none of those things matter then it's just down to whether you like buttons on the front or the pick stick and side buttons. http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=67511 http://www.gpspassion.com/fr/articles.asp?id=175&page=5 http://www.naviboard.de/vb/showthread.php?t=21730 http://gpstracklog.typepad.com/gps_tracklo...tek-gps-ch.html http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=80114

That is NOT the eTrex Venture, the picture you linked to is the eTrex VentureC This is the Venture. I can recommend it as an excellent beginner's model.

@='Mind Orb In an ideal world a second hand Yellow eTrex precisely is what you are asking for, however this is far from an ideal world and I would urge you not to buy the yellow eTrex but rather the eTrex Venture (that's the green one) you should be able to pick up one in mint condition on ebay for about $60-$80. Speaking from personal experience if I had to choose between even a brand new eTrexH (yellow) and a mint cond used Venture, I'd choose the latter. See post #6 here to see why you should not get the Yellow eTrex. Note when buying second hand make sure you get a data cable with it. This looks good.

Steripen, paper topo map, and compass

This is why I would never recommend anyone save $20 and buy the Legend instead of the VistaHCx. As there is no compass on the Legend if you are not walking fast enough the gps compass cannot plot a fix. You should just use the map page and not bother with the pointer.

Thanks I shall digest all this.

As far as I can tell that is only an option with auto routing maps. The problem is not that it's moving away from the route that I make but that it is deciding to travel to the destination via the closest point, but I want it to follow the route I manually construct. For example if the start and end point are near each other because the route is circular then it will want to go straight to the end. I found some new options in the Route menu that says Off Road Transitions... When I click that it was on Auto, the two other options are Manual and Distance. I thought this was the problem. Manual is not good as it wont' follow the route at all, without more input. I thought that Distance might be the answer although I'm not sure what it means, by default it is set to 0 kilometres. But when I set it to Distance it behaves the same as if it was on Auto. What I want it to do is to follow the route in the order that I programmed it and when I reach a point to automatically go to the next point, rather than the quickest way to the end.

I agree with the idea of the eTrex H. It's about the same price as the old yellow eTrex. The new high sensitivity eTrex is not about the same price as the old yellow eTrex, it *is* the same price. What can we deduce from this. We can deduce that Garmin are slightly insane. Now that we have established that it is easier to understand another thing they do that is equally insane, which rules out the Yellow eTrex and the Summit. The most basic thing you will want to do with your gps is to mark a waypoint in the field and name it. Think about this. You are walking around, maybe in the bush or maybe just in a street and you think "ooh I want to remember how to get to this place" so you press a button and mark it and name it. Doesn't that sound like a logical thing to do? You've can store 500 waypoints in the basic units. However the Yellow eTrex and Summit and Camo, (in other words the three units without that little button on the front) are completely useless for doing this most basic of operations. For two reasons, one, you only have 6 spaces in which to give meaningful names to hundreds of waypoints. It ain't gonna happen. Two the method that Garmin provides for actually entering the names is so convoluted and awkward that if I could only afford a basic unit then I would get the Venture rather then the Yellow eTrexH with the high sensitivity receiver. The high sensitivity receiver is very desireable but not that desireable that it is worth sacrificing the usability of the gps. Simply put, do not get the Yellow, Camo, or Summit. You will regret it. Any other eTrex is fine. If Garmin were not insane then they would have put the discontinued the Yellow eTrex and replaced it with the Venture with a high sensitivity chip. Get the Yellow eTrex at your own peril, if you want a high sensitivity receiver then get any other one with an H in the name.

I don't have any maps installed yet. Sometimes I make my own route by marking turns as waypoints using google maps and then I join them all up as a route. However when I follow tell the gps to follow this route it does not follow it as I tell it but follows it as it sees fit. So if my end point is closer to my starting position than the first point on the route, it decides to take me straight to the end. Is there some sort of option that I have missed that is causing this.

@8Nuts MotherGoose Might be worth your while to consider the VistaHCx if you are going to buy the 60CSx, the only real differences between the two in any real world usage is that one has a brighter screen and 50% better battery life. One has buttons on the front and the other has side buttons.

@'diveryan How much are you thinking of spending on the refurb Legend. Because you can get the absolute pinacle of handheld etrex for only $220. If you are going to be using this under heavy tree cover you really should be thinking about the hi sensitivy receivers.

No one here can assist you without more information. What is your budget, do you especially want to buy new? What are the reasons for selecting these two. However even without any other information I can tell you a bit about the Summit, I don't know anything about the explorist. I would not recommend getting the Summit due to the poxy method when you need to input a waypoint in the field and the lack or space to name it. Also this one really sucks the batteries dry if you use the compass, gets about 10 hours use. Not good. Later models with a compass do not appear to suffer from this problem. The Colour Vista HCx for example gets 25hours with the compass on full time. If you really must have a compass then you will need to get the Vista HCx which is their top of the range unit, but it's still pretty cheap at $220. I'd strongly suggest you forget the Summit and buy a $10 hand held compass and consider the Venture instead (green one) this is a very nice unit to use. EDIT: something I'll never understand is the relatively small price differences between greatly varying units. Like you have already committed $130 in your mind but for just $90 more, (I mean really that's peanuts isn't it) you can get a gps that is light years ahead of the explorist and the gah! Summit. You'll end up losing more than $90 when it comes time to upgrade but if you get the Vista HCx you will enjoy the very considerable benefits of a massively improved signal reception and accuracy. Like you will be able to use it under heavy tree cover, up until a few months ago you would have had to go to the then, $350 60CSx to get that. Not only that but you will have a compass that doesn't kill the batteries and a very bright colour screen with a built in Basemap. This gps will keep you happy for years to come. There's lots of other benefits as well. $90 difference between very mediocre and state of the art. You'll probably save more than $90 in batteries over time as well. If you got the Summit for example you would not have any choice but to buy rechareable batteries but you could get away without that with the HCx. If the Summit is worth $130 then the true value of the Vista HCx would be about $500 not the paltry $220 you can get it for.

Unless you really need to keep a gps in your purse, it's not a very good choice. Bad battery life too. At that price range if you want to buy new, a better choice would be the eTrex Venture, that's the green one. However still in that price range I think a very good choice would be to pick up a second hand eTrex Vista (monochrome) on eBay you can get them in mint condition for $120. The new models with the high sensitivity reciever (they have an H in the name) are very tempting but I would urge you to resist getting the only one in your price range, the basic yellow eTrexH because it is a pain in the butt to use.

I know I've said it before and doubtless I'll say it again, especially as it was the deciding factor between getting the HCx over the 60CSx, and that is although the screen on the 60 is a bit larger, the resolution is a bit less so it needs to be held further away thereby virtually nullifying the extra size. I also found it ridiculous that the pages have a menu bar across the top telling you what page you are on. In every test I've seen the HCx's Media Tek chipset does better than the 60's quad helix SirfStarIII although the difference is tiny.

I was wondering the same thing. I would expect it pretty soon. I'll write to shieldzone and check. Also boxwave should be getting one ready too.

in real terms, viewing the 60CSx at 10 inches is pretty much the same as viewing the HCx at 9 inches. However the height to width ratio is a bit more on the 60CSx but this extra height is taken up by a menu bar that tells you what page you are on, as if one couldn't tell that the altimeter was on the altimeter page and the map is on the map page, etc. Another way of looking at it, is that because the HCx has 10% more pixels and is 10% smaller across the width it would mean the although the 60CSx is 10% bigger it needs to be viewed 10% further away to attain the same clarity of resolution. This is what tipped me towards the HCx after 4 weeks of soul searching. I felt that Garmin (as usual) were messing with my mind.