flarbear

I wasn't sure if you were speaking to my post or not. I have no doubts about REI's return policy - it's one of the best in the business. My problem is that I bought and loaded the City Navigator maps on my CO and the maps are tied to the device. Garmin doesn't allow transfers of maps to other units, but they will send you a new unlock code with a replacement device if you have to get it replaced. The question is - if I return to REI under their liberal return policy, do they have any pull with Garmin to get them to also send me another unlock code for maps on the returned unit? Time will tell when I go in to return the CO...

[sorry, double reply due to a browser error...]

I was in the REI store on Friday night talking with someone at the GPS counter and decided to get an Oregon (despite not being on sale). I was going to be doing an extensive full day geocaching run on Saturday and wanted to try the OR for comparison as I've grown weary of using the scroll wheel for entering multi-cache coordinates and comments. The counter person was saying that the CO was never a popular seller and that is why it went on such a steep sale, but the OR is selling reasonably well. It's unfortunate because I had the CO for a nice price (really it was a mistake on the part of their cashier) and was hoping to recoup most of the difference in price on buying the OR at full price by selling my CO for a decent second hand price that was competitive with what I paid, but now it looks like my second hand CO won't be worth much. I also talked with the REI person about dealing with the fact that I already spent money to load the Street maps on the CO. She said that if I returned the unit to them then they could get on the phone with Garmin to get them to release a new unlock code as if I had returned it to Garmin for a replacement, but I'm skeptical if that will work. I agree with the previous poster that this doesn't necessarily mean that the CO will be deleted from their inventories - it may just mean a lower street price on the unit for some time. After all, its screen is still a little bit more readable than the OR and if they fix its accuracy problems then it may have a continued life as I think its control interface is probably a little more suited for some rugged environments compared to the touchscreen on the OR. One problem I have with the OR is that the touchscreen, while fast for most things, is still just touchy enough that you have to be careful where you click and that takes quite a bit more attention to use it. If you are hiking over rough terrain, then you can easily use the CO (slowly, one handed) while you walk, but the OR takes so much of your attention to make sure you hit each button exactly. You can still use the OR one-handed, but it takes a little more attention. Standing still, and especially with two hands, using the OR is much faster than using the CO, but walking the OR is clumsy. Also, using the wheel to change map zooms was one thing I find much easier on the CO and something I did constantly while walking - the zoom buttons on the OR are a compromise between screen real estate and usability and take longer to change the zoom by a large factor compared to flipping the wheel on the CO. I'd love to see an OR tradeup for CO owners, but I don't think it is expected. If the two had been released together on day one and had similar reliability of accuracy I could see them appealing to different customers, though the OR would be much more popular for many of the same reasons that most of us are wishing we'd known about the OR when we bought our CO's. I'm not 100% convinced that the CO doesn't have its own market to continue to cater to.

OK, you all inspired me today - on a DNF, no less... A recent flarbear DNF log (Too over the top? Just trying to inject some humor, but I don't want to scare off future searchers...)

Here are some thoughts. Under the rules "logging" a challenge cache doesn't require interaction with the publisher, but the log can be deleted by the publisher. Thus, keeping the log does require some implicit compliance from the publisher. Thus, while it is interesting to take into account the possibility that a publisher with a grudge might keep a logger from finding the cache by denying the final coordinates - that isn't the end of the story for whether or not the logger can log it. The point about having to wait for verification to get the final coordinates when there is a time constraint (such as being in the correct area on vacation) is an important one in my view. This primarily requires a non-interactive way to get the coordinates and email seems to be the first thing that comes to mind and the easiest to implement, but there could be other alternatives. I did see on one puzzle cache a link to a web page where I could type in my answer and have a server tell me if I was right (not required to solve it, but it prevented footwork if you were wrong). This seemed like a great way to provide an automated "yes, you solved it" system that required no interaction with the publisher. Obviously something that simple doesn't work with challenge caches, but you could imagine a system that could allow a potential logger to enter the cache codes and some way to provide either an automated verification to deliver the final coordinates, or minimally a record of their attempt to qualify that could be recorded. Obviously this would require quite a bit of programming on someone's part, but the current geocaching.com site does seem to have some very powerful tools for doing location-based queries on the database. It would be interesting to develop an automated challenge cache mechanism that would let someone set up some query-like requirements and have potential finders submit geocaches from their logs against those requirements. Such a system could then automate the delivery of the final coordinates. Even if the challenge requirements couldn't be expressed in queries, the system could at least require the submission of a set of cache IDs that would go on record as their "claim" to the right to see the final coordinates. Also, the log system currently only provides one way to deal with the ALR requirements - the publisher can allow or delete the log. It would be nice if the log system (I know, I know - great way to suggest work for others to complete...) could be upgraded to allow a publisher to flag a "found" log as "verified" or "unverified". Only the publisher would have access to these additional tags, and possibly only if the cache was marked with a "challenge" attribute flag. This would likely defuse much of the angst over logging/deleting as the log would still be there, but the status would be viewable and could be culled out in the statistics. Those who could care less about the ALR could log them and get a "smirky" in their stats and move on. Those who are serious about ALR caches could enjoy the peace and tranquility of having "ear to ear grinnies" in their stats page that others lack. Finally, would it work better if the focus of delivering the list of qualifying caches be the log itself rather than email? That would make the list of what they tried to submit and why it might have been denied a matter of public record to avoid the "I didn't get their email" problems. It might also let them appeal to a GS volunteer if there is a dispute (hopefully rare).

Probably because lots of gps have transmitters in them. Easier for the flight crew if the policy is all gps need to be off instead of consulting a long, frequently changing list. Jim Also, many receivers are "leaky". I'm a bit vague on the theories and I'm not sure if this affects GPS receivers, but the action of some receivers turns them into RF transmitters. This is why one radar detector might set off another - both are receivers, but the technique they are using actually leaks RF transmissions. I'm sure it is worse in a case like a radar detector that isn't looking for quality reception, as compared to a GPS unit which needs to perform precise calculations on the signals it receives, but the general possibility that a radio receiver might leak signals is probably enough for an airline to want to ban their use...

Yes, and no. With respect to car navigation: The Nuvis speak directions, the Colorados do not. This is a major plus for car navigation. CO has a nice high res display, but it is still smaller than the Nuvi units (even the non-widescreen ones) and size matters a lot when you are trying to keep your eyes on the road. The touch screen on a Nuvi is much better for typing addresses than the wheel. None of the Colorados come with street maps - it's an extra extra purchase (though given their price if you can afford a Colorado, it's not that much more of an add on). With respect to geocaching: The "pointer pointing at the destination and distance" you get on a Nuvi does reasonably well for homing in, especially if you get a smaller "vehicle" graphic that doesn't hide the line when you are in close range. When you are doing multi-stage caches, it's a lot easier to type coordinates into a Nuvi with the touch screen than with the scroll wheel on the Colorado. The paperless geocaching macros for GSAK really give a nice display of the information on the Nuvi, but the Colorado paperless geocaching still has much more functionality. I subjectively give the nod to my CO for accuracy close in to a cache, but it's not a strong feeling. The flat back of the Nuvis makes a great surface on which to sign logs in micros in tight places. I have a CO 400t with NA street maps and a Nuvi 200 I just bought on a Memorial Day fire sale for traveling. I've taken to loaning my CO to a friend and using my Nuvi when we go geocaching, just to test the waters (and to try to hook my friend a little by letting him use the CO). It's still a little nicer homing in with the CO, but I didn't miss it all that much in the end. If I had gotten the Nuvi first and had never used a CO, then I never would have worried about it (with respect to geocaching - I do use the CO when hiking and biking, though, and it wins over a Nuvi there by a long shot). With respect to price, CO + street maps will run you $650 to $700 depending on how well you shop. Nuvi 200 units are commonly available for under $200. On the excellent sales I found I paid 5x for my CO setup compared to my Nuvi. It's hard to argue with those economics...

Great script! I love the way they show up on my Nuvi 200 (spare travel/nav GPS I bought for a song on a Memorial Day sale) - nicer even than my Colorado from my quick look. I like the option to move the hints to the end, but for the truly guerilla cachers, maybe an option to omit the hints might be useful. Also, if the text color for the hints can be modified, then maybe a color that doesn't show up very well would make it less likely that someone would read the hint if they accidentally scroll too far. For the group I typically geocache with, we have access to a Colorado and a Geocache Navigator (just for database queries on a cell phone with no GPS) to optionally display the hints if we need them so the Nuvi users could easily get by without any hints at all on their units...

Are they banning cell phones, or just holding them to your ear? CA is implementing a ban soon on using a cell phone without a handsfree device. If the proposal is similar, then they'd probably only ban the UI of the GPS and probably while moving like the Toyotas already do. Personally I steered away from a Toyota during my last car purchase because of this. Also, you can google to find out how to disable this safety feature on the Lexus and Prius cars. Also, the ban on cell phone use in CA is only for the driver - the passengers can use cell phones all they want. Similarly, if you have a front seat passenger then the passenger should be able to use the UI on any device in the car - the ban should only be on the driver (unlike the Toyota system which blocks use of the UI even if you have a front seat passenger to do it for you).

Or at least reverse the scroll direction. I'm used to rotating a dial to move the dial to a new entry, not moving the entries to a point on the dial. I've had the Colorado for about 3 weeks now and every time I try to enter something when it shows the circular entry I start going the wrong way and then have to backtrack. I'm thinking "which way do I turn the dial to make the dial move to that icon over there" rather than "which way do I want the icons to move so that the one I want is at the top". I don't think I have a problem in the cases where I turn the dial to scroll through a list, though. The problem only happens when I have a picture of the dial and a bunch of choices hovering over it like the shortcuts and the number/letter entry. Or at least the option to reverse it for those who think the other way if I'm not in the majority here... Better graphics might help too. If they made the picture of the dial encompass the icons/letters/numbers then my brain my believe that the entries will move in the direction that I move the dial, but the way it is drawn looks too much like the old TVs where you turned the knob and the channel numbers remained stationary...

FWIW, I just bought an 8GB Class 6 Patriot SDHC card and had similar experiences. I put it in my Colorado 400t and hooked it to my PC using the USB cable and tried to copy some files (JPEG photos) over to the SD card inside it and had all sorts of trouble with the card mounting and unmounting and the copy being unsuccessful. I then copied some data to the card using a standalone USB media card reader/writer (a few photos at the start, then some huge files to take up space, then a few more photos at the end of the card) filling all but 5MB out of the nearly 8GB of room on the card and the Garmin was able to see all of the photos, including the ones at the start and the ones I copied at the end of it. One odd thing, though, was that the first time I hooked the card to my computer via the media card reader it would not write to the card, claiming that it was write protected. I pulled the card out, checked its protect tab and it was not protected. Just in case, I flipped the switch back and forth and remounted it and now I could copy data to it just fine. So I checked writing to it with my Garmin on the USB cable again and this time I was successful with some small files, but the data write speeds were very slow. Deleting a bunch of the files on the card via the Garmin USB was also slow. I then tried to copy 11MB of some large JPEGs onto the card and ran into the card mounting and unmounting on me again. All in all, I would never trust using the Garmin in Mass Storage Mode to maintain this card, but it does appear to read data from it just fine all the way out to the 8GB limit...

Unfortunately the size problems persist and are worse. I ordered a protector from ZAGG about a week ago in a box marked "Garmin Colorado 400t SCREEN" and just went to put it on tonight to discover that it is completely the wrong size. I'm not talking about a mm here or there or whether or not it covers the garmin logo - it's at least a half inch too wide and at least an inch too tall. It covers from below the plastic bezel (i.e. overlaps the battery cover) all the way up onto the jog dial with about a quarter inch of overhang onto those parts. Way too big. Sigh - I sent them a note on their web site, but at this point, it's worth $3.50 to order from onestopshop who appears to have gotten the sizes correct. My time is worth that much more than to send them back their bad part in an envelope...

I bought this screen protector, but was very disappointed with what I got. I'm familiar with using products like this as I've ordered 3 similar protectors for 3 other devices I've owned and installed them with little trouble. The shield I got for the Colorado was just a rectangular piece of the special film - much too large for the screen and not shaped in any way to match any edge or curve on the device. I cannot believe that this product was actually designed for the Colorado and it cannot be made to work without extensive customization. The product is at least half an inch too wide for the screen. While it might be possible that they intended it to also cover the silver side rails, it is slightly too wide even for that. Even worse, the product is more than an inch too tall for the screen such that it could cover from the (curved) bottom silver edge all the way up over the 2 buttons and about a quarter inch onto the scroll wheel. Since below that is the removable battery cover and above that is a movable scroll wheel and the product must overlap at least a quarter inch of one or the other or both, it clearly isn't compatible with using it on the Colorado, even if the oversize was intentional. I've had good luck with very precise fit from BestSkinsEver.com for 3 other device, but they don't offer a solution for the Colorado (yet).