baozebub

WAAS corrects for satellite ephemeris and clock errors; and ionospheric delay errors. WAAS cannot correct for bad GPSs (faulty receivers or slow processors). On a bad iono day, WAAS performance degrades. Another factor that degrades performance is satellite geometry. In deep canyons, the satellites you see tend to be right overhead, which results in weak lateral positioning. Satellite geometry that is heavily weighted on one side or another will also give you bad lateral positioning. In general, a full constellation will give you the best positioning. A non-cloudy day may not necessarily mean a good ionospheric clear day, so GPS performance may degrade for no visible reason (this should be rare). The quality of your hardware and software is very important in determining your position. A person with a bad GPS unit on a bad iono day may be off by quite a bit. I've got a Vista HCx and love it!

Wow. That's less detail than I can get off the internet - http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?cli...&multimap.y=251 Bao?

Hi Jamie, Thanks for your response. I'm going by train from Hanoi into China on New Years Eve (ours, not theirs), and am not sure if I can make it up to Beijing and back down to Shanghai for a departure flight on the 9th of January. So I may try to hit a few cities along the Nanning-Guangzhou-Shanghai route. I figure with so little time, I should try to plan as much as possible before going. Since the cities all seem to be connected by trains, I wanted a way to keep track of where I am w.r.t. Shanghai by train route. Problem is that maps of China seem to be hard to find. I guess I'll take your advice to get paper maps and keep the Magellan handy for maybe saving waypoints. Bao?

I couldn't find any info on this with a search. I wonder if anybody has taken their Magellan Meridian Color to China, and if they know if MapSend WorldWide Basemap is any good over there. I'm not looking for street detail as much as major highways and railroads. I'm concerned that the software may not be up-to-date, since China's probably building new roads and railroads by the day. Is MapSend WorldWide Basemap at least as good as a travel map I can buy at the bookstore? Thanks.

Go to superpages.com and type in Magellan for the business name. Type in Santa Clara for city and California for state. Any company that contracts with the US government is not gonna go off onto some tax shelter. That's not good for Americans like you and me. I'll probably stick around these forums despite the crazies. I love my Magellan Meridian Color so far. It's my latest cool toy. But then, not having any experience with an equivalent Garmin, I don't realy know any better. Bao?

It's amazing how easily Americans can get whipped up into a religious fervor to hate some race, creed, religion, sex, political affiliation, or whatever. My company is a US government contractor that has a joint venture with Thales to provide battlefield systems for the US military. Magellan's home base is located right on El Camino Real in Santa Clara. You can't miss it. As for the comparison between the two makes, I would normally accept the opinions of just about anybody here as expert, since I'm new to GPSr ownership. But now I'm starting to think that GPS'ers who post are a bunch of backwards hillbillies. Isn't owning a GPSr supposed to make you a bit more "worldly?" Bao?

Reminds me of when those people were naming their fried potatos "freedom fries."

jd, Like I said - I'm new to GPS ownership, so can't give you a head to head comparison. I got the Magellan Meridian Color Traveler's Value pack for $393 total, and added 256MB SD flash memory and an SD card reader for an additional$92, for a grand total of around $485. Likes so far: 1 The maps are pretty accurate, and include my friend's house on a street that's a few months old. I've had some errors in exact addresses (a couple of blocks off from the real address). 2 The routing feature is great, though I've not yet used it for any route I don't already know. It's great to find exact distances from where you are to where you want to go on a street by street route. 3 The accuracy is great. If I set a waypoint, I can come back to the same spot using GPS alone. 4 User interface is a lot easier to pick up than I expected. 5 Expandable memory - up to 512MB. I can store unlimited waypoints. 6 Package came with cigarette lighter adapter, maps, windshield mount, 64MB memory, batteries. Dislikes and iffys: 1 Don't like the serial cable. Should be USB. 2 Mapping software only works on one receiver. So if I lose my receiver, my maps are worthless. 3 Not sure about the durability yet. The screen seems to flicker in certain lighting situations. 4 I don't know about battery usage yet. The claim of 6 hours on constant backlight seems too low. I checked out the specs and prices for the Garmin 60c in comparison with what I have. It seems like you're gonna be paying a couple hundred dollars extra, and your memory isn't expandable. I'm considering buying it in a few months in order to do a comparison, just so I can definitely say which one is better, or if they are both the same with different look. I can always give the one I like less to my brother. Also, the unit doesn't have an "electronic" compass, so you have to move to find which way is north. The screen seems pretty good for outdoor use, but is not like what you would get from your laptop or anything. I'd like to see what the 60c screen looks like when it comes out. The reception is great in my car while it's sitting on the passenger seat. Sorry I don't have more yet. Bao?

Sorry if I seem ignorant. I'm new to GPSr ownership. I've been browsing these forums trying to figure out the big difference between these two makes. People seem to say it's a matter of personal tastes. This was completely useless to me. The reason why I got a Magellan Color with maps is because it's much cheaper than the alternatives with the same features. So it seems that in the category of handhelds, Magellan wins since no one can state another reason (reception, display, accuracy, etc.) why Garmin is better. Bao?

Thanks everyone for your responses. Also, extra thanks to the person who sent me the link to the Yahoo Meridian Group. If it wasn't for the super long download to my Meridian using the included serial cable, I wouldn't mind changing maps as I need them. My solution was to get a 256MB card and a USB card reader. Putting two regions onto the card did the trick, and I still have over 170MB left over. I probably didn't need the 256MB card, since the USB card reader made download from my laptop possible and fast. Bao?

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it. I just bought a Magellan Meridian Color with 64MB SD card. I would like to buy more memory but the MapSend software only allows me to download 64MB at a time. The question is - if I buy a 256MB memory card, then can I download 4 maps at 64MB each, or will I only be able to store one 64MB map? Does the Magellan Meridian Color allow 256MB memory cards? Bao?