kerecsen
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Posts posted by kerecsen
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As my GPS broke (http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=101363) and got stolen (in beautiful New York City) within the course of a couple of weeks, I urgently need to get a new one.
I liked the 60cs, but the laughable memory space and the poor reliability let me wanting for something better.
Is there anything better for combined hiking/driving use?
I was looking at the M5 (but read lackluster reviews), other PDAs (they are huge + battery life/impact resistance are abysmal), the 320c (doesn't look like it would survive a trip in a backpack) and the Magellan units (no Hungarian map + hate the UI).
Do I have other choices?
Has anyone heard rumors of Garmin coming up with an improvement replacement for the outdated 60cs?
Thanks,
Tamas
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If you called them, send an email. If you emailed them, call them. Keep contacting them until you get a customer service rep who's sympathetic to your situation and accepts the repair for free. Chances are you'll get a different rep each time.
The email rep was an a**, but the phone rep was nice and agreed to fix it for free (granted, I had to wait 45 minutes on hold!!!).
See follow-up thread for the next chapter of my odyssey.
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I noticed the top of the menu bar is clipped off despite the angle of view of the GPS.
...
Send the GPS back to Garmin with a couple pictures in the box of what the screen looks like when messed up.
It is just a shadow, the menu bar was fine and dandy...
I guess repair is out of question, I've just barely run out of warranty and they demand $150 to fix it (when a new one is less than $350 -- are they insane?).
I have always been a big supporter of Garmin, but I guess I'm not buying my next GPS from them
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Hi 60cs owners out there,
Lately I've been having a very strange issue with my 60cs. About every once out of 10 times the screen goes nuts while I'm doing a Find. Sometimes the GPS reboots shortly thereafter, but sometimes it keeps working with the display distorted.
The last time it happened I had my camera handy:
Besides the inverted display shown above, I've also seen "interlaced" (only every other line visible) and discolored image, as well as digital noise.
Anyone has seen any of these ever? If it is a unique hardware issue, I'd like to send the GPS back before the warrany expires, but if it is a more widespread issue, I don't want to lose my GPS for weeks to service...
Thanks!
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I just checked my copy of City Navigator v6. It has pretty good detail for the dozen or so biggest cities, but other than that it is highways and main roads only (with short "twigs" sticking out at larger crossing streets).
If you want to see it with your own eyes, or evaluate the target area, you can go to: http://www.garmin.com/cartography/ontheRoad/, and select "city select europe v6" in the "MapSource Map Viewer" window on the right.
Edit: I can also confirm that the overview map has significantly more detail than the detailed map. They must be rebuilding their map of Ireland from scratch, with the overview showing the old, detailed but incorrect map; and the new one showing the beginnings of a good one. All in all if your friend is visiting to the bigger cities it looks usable. Otherwise the little help it provides in navigating highways is probably not worth the price.
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I have no doubt that AT&T will be going bankrupt soon - and now I'm gonna switch carriers next month after all the dust settles with my account.
I apologize for being utterly off-topic, but I thought you may want to see this piece of news from a couple of weeks ago. (Read the Slashdot original here)
"Just got it from a press release on the AT&T website: 'AT&T will no longer be competing for residential local and standalone long distance customers. The company stressed that existing residential customers will continue to receive the quality service they expect from AT&T; however, the company will no longer be investing to acquire new customers in this segment.'"
ps: I like how their reference to the quality of service does not betray whether it is actually good or bad. Other companies would have said "excellent quality of service", but I suppose ever since Enron large companies are afraid to lie.
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I have access to Hawaii, Alaska, West Topos but not the East. It will bring up the East section and show the map zoomed out but then Mapsource crashes.
This is a known issue with the Topo map. You can download a patch from Garmin here .
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If all else fails, you may want to give filemon a shot (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml). Start filemon, set up a filter for "mapsource*" and do the operation that crashes mapsource (what is it, btw?). If you check out what the file activity was just before the crash, you may figure out the root cause.
Another approach (I don't know if garmin has suggested it or not) would be to get rid of all the maps in mapsource (export all the registry keys below HKLM/Software/Garmin/Mapsource /Families and /Products and then delete them one by one).
If you could give us a list of what you've already tried, I think I could me more specific.
Tamas
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It's telling me another device is using the COM1 (could be the issue). How can I find out what it is?
If you have a palm or pocketPC then the sync utility is the most likely candidate (unless it uses USB). A crude but effective approach is to stop all applications that are running either by closing them or killing them in the task manager. Don't terminate the system components though
If you prefer finesse, you have two choices: either try to use PortMon (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/portmon.shtml) which will show you when some process is actually doing serial i/o, or start Process Explorer (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml) and find (Find->Find Handle) the process that uses "\Device\Serial0".
Doesn't your PC have a second COM port? You could also try using that...
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Just remember to fully discharge the batts, and allow unit to cool before recharging. lionz as well as all rechargables have a "memory" and if you fail to discharge the batts completly before recharging you will "lower" the effective reserve capacity of the lionz.
I recently performed some research on battery types and most sources recommend a different charging regimen. NiMH batteries can be recharged whenever convenient, with rare conditioning runs where you discharge and recharge them fully. Note however that full discharge doesn't mean connecting the battery on a light bulb or such; it only means running it down to about 1 V. Connecting a resistor-type load for a long duration will lead to deep discharge below 1 V which could reduce the lifetime of the battery.
Here is a rather comprehensive summary on this subject:
http://dpfwiw.com/batteries.htm#management
LiIon batteries are radically different from NiCD and NiMH. They do not have a memory effect, and they hate being deep-discharged. In fact they have protective circuits to stop them from being discharged under 2.5 V (where they could explode, or be permanently damaged). Sometimes if you trigger this circuit (and allow some time for additional self-discharge), you won't be able to recharge the battery anymore.
It is recommended to recharge LiIon when they have used up about 80% of their capacity, and to discharge them fully as seldom as possible.
It is interesting to note that Li-ion batteries -- more so than their NiMH or NiCD counterparts -- have a shelf life. Whether you use the battery or not, it will keep losing capacity. The consensus here is that LiIon batteries should be stored about half-charged in a cool place (but not frozen).
Leaving your battery (or your GPS containing the battery) fully charged in a hot car almost guarantees to kill the battery in as little as 6 months.
Details:
http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap10-page6.asp
http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap15-page2.asp
A few additional links on the subject of batteries:
http://www.cadex.com/gen_arch.asp
http://www.buchmann.ca/default.asp
http://home.att.net/~mikemelni1/battery.html
http://data.energizer.com/batteryinfo/appl...tal_hydride.htm
Need A New Gps
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
Well, if you compare the speed/versatility/features of the 60cs to any decent PDA-based navigator, you will see that the 60cs's software is seriously stuck in the 20th century. It was very nice and revolutionary when I bought my eMap 6 years ago, but so was a 1 GHz Pentium-III.
The 56 megs of ram are barely enough to fit one state, let alone a reasonable 4 day weekend roadtrip (which also requires some topo maps for hiking).
And why should I have to "prepare" the GPS for the trip in the first place?! What happens if I miss a plain/train connection and get stuck in some weird city for the evening? Honestly, how hard is it to add an SD (or even miniSD, for all I care) socket? If I can walk around with several gigs of memory for my camera, why does Garmin expect me to carry a laptop for the GPS?
But I'm not trying to influence anyone's judgement. In fact I recommend the 60c as the best all-around GPS to anyone who asks (at least I used to before my 60cs broke). But for my purposes and for the hefty $500 price tag (or $800 with EU maps), I find it unduly constraining and inflexible.