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Is it actually turning off, or simply claiming the batteries are low? Since I "upgraded" the firmware on my 550, the battery gauge shoots down, and the "low battery" appeared after 2 hours, but the unit stayed on for a total of 8 1/2 hours, 6 1/2 of them with a single red bar indicated. I've set the battery type back to alkaline and powered down, then powered up and reset it to NiMH, but I didn't try a drain test since. I use 2700mAH NiMH cells, and the backlight is permanently on at about 90%.

It managed a further 6 1/2 hours from when the low battery message appeared, so there is no increased battery drain, just the indicator is out of calibration. I'll try setting it back to standard and then back again to NiMH.

I crossed my fingers and applied the update to my 550 today. Can't see any difference with the map drawing, but the battery level gauge seems to go down a lot quicker, it reported low battery after 2 hours, but it is still working after 5 hours (I run the back-light at about 90% all the time in an attempt to be able to actually see the display and waas/enos is enabled)

How I fixed it 1) I got hold of Recovery_Oregon550.zip, which came from the x50 region link on the oregon wiki. 2) I followed the instructions about button holding and usb plugging, it is difficult to keep the button pressed long enough, you can't relax for an instant. Eventually the pc reports success. 3) I unplugged the usb, the unit powers down 4) I held in the power button and plugged in the usb, this stopped it booting and locking up. I waited for the pc to recognise it as mass storage. 5)From the pc I browsed to \garmin on the oregon and deleted the possibly corrupt GUPDATE.GCD 6) unplug usb and power on the oregon: it works. I then did a hard reset on the oregon, usb'd it and deleted anything ending in GPX that hadn't got a current date and timestamp. I then webupdated it, it worked. However, I emailed garmin with the steps 1)-6), they may have fixed the webupdater if it was corrupt by the time I tried it again.

Thanks, but I did this, and it starts up, loads maps, then verifies an upgrade, then does the loading and blue dot/line thingie, then crashes. So I repeated the exercise, forced it to usb rather than restart and deleted the corrupt??? UPD file. This got it working as v3.40. The info file with that file claims it should be v2.50 now, it did say "erasing" at one point too. Anyway, managed to webupdate to 3.90, and the WAAS still doesn't work....

I had already removed the card. I did a hard reset, deleted everything ending in gpx, reset the computer as well, and the webupdater worked. No idea what it was. Maybe I have faulty flash rom, and deleting the birdseye imagery stuff allows the UPD file to reside in a working area of the rom? Maybe garmin realised their UPD had got corrupted and refreshed it? Maybe my pc was sending it corrupt? Thanks for the suggestion, it was the only thing I didn't try, mostly because a hard reset (press top left of screen whilst powering on) didn't seem to be working. Now just 3 months to get the settings back how I used to like them.....

Seems I'm the only one with a problem. All the other boys seem to be able to play with their 550, but mine won't upgrade. It did the verifying, and loading, the blue line went across the screen, then it just says Garmin, and freezes. I tried removing the batteries, then replacing, holding the power button, plugging in the usb and holding the button to force mass storage mode, then run webupdater again. It then doesn't bother checking or loading, just freezes on garmin screen. I tried a repair which should have erased the flash and then put it back to 2,5. This seemed to work, it loaded maps, then went to verifying upgrade, loading, blue line and freeze. So I did it again, and left the usb in, then deleted GUPDATE.GCD from the \garmin folder. Now it works! but claims it is v3.40. I tried downloading the upgrade as a GCD and copying it to \garmin as GUPDATE.GCD in the hope that it was corrupt, but it just verifies, loads and freezes. Any suggestions, apart from send it back to garmin?

Today I started basecamp, and stupidly agreed to an "update" to 3.04. Now I'm downloading a 75 mb image (yes the maximum image is getting smaller, you might as well stand on your roof and photograph it yourself) and my PC is unuseable. Task manager won't run, and I'm looking at 84% on one core, and 44% on the other 3, tasklist tells me basecamp is using 1.14GB of my ram. I will post to the garmin user forums, but in the meantime, be warned.

FWIW, I've noticed that the expensive brand named rechargeable batteries actually last for years with just weekend use and monthly charging, the very cheap supermarket ones are scrap after 6 months and will not hold a charge.

I own an Oregon 550t and an eTrex Vista HCX so I am qualified to Oregon bash Guess which one I use the most for bicycle trail riding and caching: The Vista: I can actually use the screen with topo to follow a trail in sunlight (mind you it does need full backlight sometimes ) I have used the Oregon on my motorcycle, with the unit angled pretty near vertical, and all the 3d features off, I can just about shade the screen enough to see it with my left hand. (Again maximum backlight all the time) Certainly the high resolution touch screen is pretty much useless in sunlight. Oh, I have genuine garmin bicycle mounts for both units, they are good, if very overpriced: £12 for a square of plastic and two cable ties

Not quite what you asked, but following on from your last post, Google Earth will load a GPX file straight from your GPS, either drag it onto the google screen, or use the "open files" dialogue and change the file type to all, or gpx. I use GPSUtility to upload Google earth paths to my garmin.

EasyGPS to download from the Vista GPSUtility to transfer google earth kmz paths to the Vista GPSBabel to convert between file types I bought and paid for GSAK, but I hardly use it.

That is how I would expect it to work; it is routing you to the cache along a road like you asked, and as there is no road right to the cache, it stops at the closest road point, like you would in your car, park up, and switch to "off road" mode when you are walking.

The 550t has a 3 axis compass which is quite good, and a camera which isn't although the pictures do get geotagged when you take them. I believe that it supports more saved tracks and waypoints too. The screen is billed as "enhanced sunlight readable" but if it is better than a 400 in this respect, the 400 must be totally unusable in bright sunshine. (I have a 550t, the camera actually takes good pictures in ideal conditions: close-up of cache, ground features etc. Mine produces pictures that are obviously underexposed if there is a whiff of backlighting i.e. any more than about 5% sky in the frame. Would be much better if there were some exposure control in the firmware.)

lowest left button> lowest left button (again) >find > geocaches You can leave it on this screen when downloading the caches, and they show up as you download them.

Provided that you draw each track in Google Earth separately, with a unique name, and export separately from google earth, then load from GPS utility one at a time, they appear as separate tracks in the saved tracks window, unless the first one has too many points I suppose.. I do this all the time, turning off the return track until I've done the out track, to avoid confusion when they cross.

If you save each trail in google earth as a separate path (with a totally different name, the vista doesn't like names like "my favourite path 1" "my favourite path 2" because it can't have more than 6 characters (I think) in a name) and load to the Vista as separate tracks, they will all show if they are turned on. Left button> left button > tracks The named tracks appear in the lower window (SAVED TRACKS). Highlight one with the cursor, press the joystick, then select a colour and ensure show on map is ticked. Trouble is when you are outside, none of the colours show up anyway. Not sure how you can trace out a network of paths, I tend to plan my expeditions sat in front of the PC with guide routes to follow. Now if you get an Oregon, you can overlay a bitmap image, which can be a tracing of all the paths or a google earth photo, or so I am led to believe....

Also, I use EasyGPS to extract the track of where I've been, and my found geocaches (it downloads everything, but you can delete what you don't want) then I use gpx2ge (I bought this, but gpsbabel works as well) to make a kmz file, then I send it to the others in my team, and we can all see exactly where we went on Google Earth, together with the caches we visited. If you keep the tracks as gpx files, you can load them back into the HCX with EasyGPS should you wish to revisit an area. I love my Vista HCX So much more useable than the Oregon I bought as an "upgrade"

Don't know if this is what you want, but I use Google Earth. I use the "create path" icon (looks like a dot to dot drawing) to draw over the trail that I want to follow. ThenI save the trail as a kmz file, and upload to the Vista as a track with GPS Utility (www.gpsu.co.uk) Then I can turn the track on or off, and change the colour using left button> left button > tracks on the HCX Walkthrough...... Fire up Google Earth Zoom around until you can see the trail. Create a path (dot to dot icon) A box appears. Name your trail with a short name. Click on style/colour and change width to 3.0 and colour to bright pink Do NOT click on ok. Draw the path by clicking and moving the mouse. Scroll the screen with the keyboard arrows. when done, click ok in the big box. Find your trail in the left hand "places" frame Right click and choose "save place as..." then save as a kmz. (If you are a premium member, you can send the kmz file to the "Find caches along a route" pocket query, useful if you just worked out a road route) Use GPS Utility to load the KMZ and send to the Vista. Or you could have saved as a KML file and used GPSBabel to change to GPX, then easy GPS to send to the Vista.

Setup>Routing>Lock on Road (set to no) Likely this is only an option if you are in the automotive profile?

Installed and working on my 550t, except the WAAS problem is still there. On initial powerup, it quickly obtained a lock, and within a minute the little Ds appeared, and the error was coming down (23feet when I left it). 10 minutes later, without moving it one inch the Ds have disappeared and the error is now 35feet And the D's won't come back

Hi, Compared to a 60CSX with the little joypad data entry system, page, enter &menu keys The colorado is a real pain to enter data with its scroll wheel, you also click & roll to get to the screens. The oregon is better with its touchscreen, but you can't see it outside very well, nigh on useless on my 'bike. Page selection is always via the main menu icons, not as easy as a vista or 60. Being a luddite, I also find it a lot more difficult to get data in and out of the oregon/colorado. With the USB plugged in, they don't work. On a vista or 60 you can see a waypoint or track appear when you upload it, which I like. The paperless feature is nice, but I can't just swap pages from hint to compass, I have to navigate a set of menus. Basically, I have access to a 60SCX a vista a colorado and an oregon (just got it at Christmas) and I always pick up the vista.

I think if you use it outside in weather the band will come unglued. My Venture CX has lived in a drawer for over 2 years and is perfect. My Vista HCx is used most weekends clipped to my 'bike, has been frozen, baked, soaked and the band fell off in about 18 months. I just cleaned off all the glue from the band and the vinyl tape on the unit, and superglued it back on.

Be careful with Archos. I bought a 605 WiFi on the strength of good reviews. Every function is a chargeable extra Want to play MPEGS? pay to download the extra surf the 'net? pay to download the extra Play a podcast? AC3 sound? guess what Charge the battery? buy the extra the USB lead can't charge it whilst it is on, it takes too much current, so you can flatten the battery whilst connected to the PC and transferring files. I know this is different kit, but once you burn your fingers, you don't pick up something that might be hot

Aren't the maps keyed to the device? Whyever would you buy a t if you can simply get a friends unit and copy their map? (With the internet you have lots of friends )