rkelso

I clip it to the shoulder strap on my life jacket when kayaking, I can just pivot the Colorado so I can see the screen.

Interesting, on Amazon's PN-40 page this item (URL) shows up under "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought".

Thanks a lot for the review. It answered a few questions I had about this map chip. If only it could be used on your PC as well!

Have you tried setting map orientation to "Track Up" instead of "North Up"? (Under Setup > Map, I think) I don't have my CO with me, but I think that moves your position towards the bottom of the screen. I don't think there's a quick way to jump between Track Up/North Up, but you could always create a Moving & Stationary profile with the different settings in each, if it accomplishes what you are looking for.

I actually think it's a great outdoor unit. I don't cache very much. The drift issue gets blown way out of proportion, I've only seen it once. The barometer works pretty darn well while the unit is turned on. Not letting Garmin off the hook, these DO need to be fixed, but it doesn't make it any less of an outdoor unit. Mine has been wet, no problem, dropped, no damage. And for all those people that don't geocache that often, what the hell do they need waypoint averaging for, anyways? Maybe that's why Garmin left it out, because it is a waste of their time since all of 20 customers want this feature? If you're using a consumer grade outdoor recreation GPS unit for data collection, that's your problem, buy a Trimble. "And on and on" what? What else can you come up with? These seem to be the only problems that apparently make the Colorado worthless to you, which is your opinion, and in mine, it's great. Just have fun with your PN-40, I'm sure it's going to rock. I'm sure nobody, including yourself, will be on these forums complaining about any issues, because it's easy to launch a brand new product without any problems.

Here's an email reply I just got from Garmin regarding this barometer issue. I was hoping for a unit replacement, but I can live with this if they actually follow-through. Needless to say, I don't have a ton of confidence in them actually fixing this issue in a timely manner as well as addressing the completely unacceptable drift problem. But at least it's something.

All I can say is, since the Oregon appears to work as advertised, that's what they should replace our Colorados with if we wish.

yogazoo, maybe I didn't make myself clear enough or you didn't read my whole post, you're preaching to the choir here I'm not arguing with you. If you are having accuracy problems that are miraculously fixed by restarting the unit then yes, you have experienced the real problem with the unit, be it software or hardware it doesn't really matter, it is a problem. What I'm saying is that if you are in less than ideal conditions and your accuracy gets bad, but can be corrected by just taking your GPS out of your pocket and lifting it up to get a better signal within seconds, or moving to a spot with a better sky view, which fixes your accuracy without a reset, then you aren't experiencing the drift issue. I've been on a walk where I come up against a hill and under some tree cover and my GPS accuracy jumps from the teens to the thirties and my track is being plotted 30 feet southwest of where it should be. As soon as I come out of the cover and move away from the hill, the GPS accuracy drops back down to the teens and my track comes back to where it should be. Sounds like the drift problem? I don't think it was, it fixed itself within seconds of coming out of the cover without being restarted, probably a result of multipath. Drift problem aside, maybe the Colorado's chipset crosses the line of high sensitivity to a point where it is too sensitive for what you have to sacrifice? Older, presumably less sensitive units, seem to do better under tree canopy. Maybe the CO's receiver is too sensitive for it's own good and picks up multipath signals that others do not. If that's the case, I think I'd rather have a receiver that calculates a reliable signal under poor conditions than one that can impressively get a satellite lock when I'm inside my house on the couch...

There seems to be a recurring conclusion that the drift problem occurs most frequently in environments were getting a good GPS signal is challenging. I suspect that many folks are actively trying to experience the problem and as a result, report a false-positive. After all, if you're using your GPSr in a canyon with heavy tree cover, you're bound to run into some problems at some point. But this problem might not be the dreaded GPS drift that apparently makes the Colorado a completely unusable piece of trash device (I'm using a bit of sarcasm there), it could just be a result of degraded signal or multipath bias. If you are in challenging GPS conditions and see your GPS accuracy "drift" up to whatever feet then hold the CO up high, vertically, and the accuracy drops back down with your track looking alright on the map, I think you're seeing normal operation under the conditions. Don't get me wrong, I know it's a real problem and I want to see it fixed, SOON, they've had enough time already. I've been tricked a couple of times but have only seen the real drift issue once, and it was a big one- probably around 1000 feet, had I noticed it while on the walk I probably would have taken the whole 15 seconds of my life to restart the unit. I've walked the same path and not been able to recreate.

This looks to be a really slick unit. I really doubt anybody who honestly thinks the Oregon/Colorado are "duds" will be truly happy with ANY product, though.

Interesting. Did you by any chance turn it off around 5:30am and back on around 3:30pm? That stretch looks completely linear and according to the weather station plot it looks like it should have continued to rise for a few more hours before falling.

Probaby a good move. I'm sure if you just hit the trail or do a little caching, you are bound to run across somebody who has one and would be happy to give you a demo before you upgrade

Trimble makes handheld units that offer sub-foot accuracy, check out http://www.trimble.com/geoxh.shtml I can't attest to this specific unit, but it's Trimble, I don't think there's much to worry about. Maybe a little overkill for the average geocacher.

This is exactly what I was thinking... unless there is some significant change in the current technology, there is a natural ceiling for the accuracy of recreational units since they make real-time calculations on single-frequency pseudorange measurements. In short, it's the hardware that is the limitation.

With this point I think you are introducing another layer to the discussion: map accuracy. Any current GPSr particularly with WAAS when receiving a good signal should be able to get you on the correct side of river or cliff. If the map you are plotting the data on top of is of low quality or you are zoomed in way closer than the base map's reference scale, then it could be a whole different issue. For example, the topo map included with my CO 400t has a scale of 1:100,000 or roughly 1 inch = 1.5 miles if it were printed on paper. Now zoom in on that map with your GPSr so that you're looking at 1 inch = a couple hundred feet, it's still the same data with a pretty large margin for error.

Does anybody know if it is possible to adjust the zoom levels of the contour lines on a Colorado 400t. For example, I would like the DEM/hillshade in the background to be set to the highest detail all the time but I would like the contour lines only to show up when I'm zoomed in to at least 0.5mi. When Map Detail is set to Highest, the contour lines are very dense and IMO show up too soon when zooming in. Any ideas?

I saw my Colorado hit 8 feet this morning, to answer your question. But like twolpert said, it's not really comparable between models.

I pushed it once with the unit turned ON and it didn't do anything. Might have to hold it down for something to happen, but I don't want to try it right now Maybe it enables the "Bug Free" mode??

No, it's on the other side of the USB port, nearest to the power button (but on the under side of the flap, of course).

I did some searching and couldn't find anything on the subject. There is a small button under the USB/Antenna flap on the Colorado, does anybody know what it is for? A reset button would make sense. I'm afraid to try it, so I don't know At least I'm assuming it's a button, feels like one, but I guess it could be a sensor? Sorry if it's been discussed before.

Map inaccuracy shouldn't affect finding a cache, as your unit downloads the actual coordinates of the geocache which you are navigating to, this is not influenced by your GPSr's base map. However, some geocaches have poor coordinates either on purpose or because the person who hid it wasn't able to collect quality coordinates with their GPS. That's usually not a big deal as any recreational GPS is only reliably accurate to ~10-15 feet at best in real-time anyways.

It's just interpolating data between readings or power on/power off that's why you can "zoom in" and look at 3min intervals. I don't think the fact that the function is broken is even an argument here. Many of my few posts on these forums are in defense of a product that I think gets more flak than it deserves but this is a feature that IS broken and NEEDS to be fixed!

I am willing to trade off a little bit of readability and battery life for a larger, higher-resolution screen. That's just what I like. Of course it would really nice to have the screen size and res of the CO with more brightness and better battery life, but sometimes you can't have it all. Honestly I think the CO screen readability issue gets blown way out of proportion, it's never been a problem for me at least. The most difficulty comes when I am in bright sunlight but my CO's screen is in a shadow, even the backlight doesn't really help, but it's still perfectly readable and you can always rock the unit around until you hit a sweet spot. The backlight is physically capable of going brighter, you'll see if you plug it into USB or 12v power, hopefully someday they will give us the option to turn it up that bright on battery at the expense of battery life. It should be our choice, really.

Really, you get spoken turn directions?? If so, I'm impressed. It's the same routing engine, he didn't say anything about spoken directions. Why do Nuvi people seem to have such an inferiority complex? Back on topic. The base map included with the 400t is at a scale of 1:100,000. Think about having a map on a standard 8.5x11 sheet where 1" roughly equals 1.5 miles. So if you zoom way in, the accuracy of that scale isn't improving at all, you are just seeing errors propagated by going in closer.

I'm new to caching too, I've only had my Colorado for a few weeks and used it pretty extensively. It's my first recreational GPSr but I have a good understanding of the technology since I use Trimble GPS at my work. I was leery about the Colorado purchase because of what I read on these forums, the wiki, etc. but decided to take the plunge and really love the unit. Really, all the people you read complaining here are the squeaky wheels and I'm sure there are many many out there like myself who are very satisfied. Not to say that the unit is perfect, there are still bugs to work out and improvements that could be made. New firmware releases are helping and hopefully there will be more to come. People love to sing the praises of the almighty 60CSx but if it's so perfect, then why the heck did so many owners upgrade to the Colorado? As a bit of a techie myself, I think it's a really fun unit to use and a solid purchase.