NewZealand

If you want a serious outdoor unit, take the 60 CSX, currently Garmins best GPS, by far, followed closely by the Vista HCX.If you can wait at least 12 months, try the Colorado then, and look if it also became a serious outdoor unit at that time.

Because it is no need for InstantFixII for 60/76CSx. It will be an unusable gadget. 60/76CSx 's usually cath fix in seconds. Christopher This is just wrong.The units have the normal satellite fix times of a SIRF III chip (of course). Depending on the situation between a few seconds up to three minutes.

It seems they have the problem in more languages ...

My problem is not so the bad quality itself, but because of the bad translations even some functionality is worse in german than if you use the unit in english. E.g. when you use trackback in german and approach a routingpoint, in english a one line message pops up. In german at least a 2 line message pops up hiding the location pointer and a big part of the map. Or if you approach a proximity waypoint, the warning message in german has no linebreak, so that you cannot read the waypointname, because it is off the screen. I patched the 3.60 firmware of my 60CSX to change all that, and it is not so easy, because the bytes of the shortened messages must be added on another place to keep the addressing functional, but it works now fine. But nevertheless, Garmin should take care of all that in the original firmware, I agree completely. Cheers, NZ

Why is SiRF InstantFixII still not available on the 60/76 CSX series ? Some Garmin units with the SIRF III Chip already got it, and some german vendors (like Medion) already updated also their older SIRF III units with the new firmware. Only the 60/76 C(S)X units are still missing it, though this would be a good enhancement! I asked SIRF if this can be applied to all SIRF-III receivers, and they said yes, it is only a matter of a change in the respective vendors firmware. It is a real pity, that a great unit like the 60/76 C(S)X series is from a firmware point of view handled so stepmotherly by Garmin, while other vendors (like Medion) still value their existing customers.

It's clear when it will come out. There is one and ONLY one possible date: April, 1st.

Then buy a 4 GB micro SD card, load the Topo's, CNs, Blue Charts and other things you need in the next 12 months on it, and I'm sure, you have all you need, even in the 2 GB limited img file.For 99,9% of the people it makes no sense to include e.g. Alaska, Hawaii and California, if they live in Oregon or New York.

Why would you want to do that ?I can't imagine any reason why I would need more than one micro-SD card with me for my 60 CSX. What are your intentions ?

On the Odometer it's right, you can only see the Altimeter elevation.But for the tracklog you can select between Altimeter elevation and GPS elevation. Go to the Altimeter config and select "fix elevation" instead of "variable elevation", and the GPS elevation will be recorded in the track log.

Anders,I don't see it like that, because of 2 reasons. First, to me, the 60 CSX is the predecessor of the Colorado, and therefore the Colorado should be able to do at least everything the CSX can do, plus something the CS could do (but not the CSX) plus some new senseful features. Second, I really don't see a reason why it should not be possible to log every single trackpoint in a "log" directory on the SD-card like on the 60 CSX. That could be done as a configurable function, and would need a programming overhead of nearly zero, because the data are just there, they only need to be saved. That would not disturb YOUR above mentioned functionality, which is of no use for me, but for you. Actually I would like to replace our 60 CSX'es to the Colorado because of some nice new features, but because it can't do the tracklog this simple way like the 60 CSX, we can't do an upgrade. I confess, we would not replace them immediately, because of the accu-problems and the other things I red, but I believe that will be solved in a few months with firmware updates. But I don't have the impression, that the tracklog will come again, and that's a killer application for us.

Hi, thanks for your interest, I'll explain: While I very well understand that different people need different things, it would be interesting to understand why this is a problem to you? There are no tracks at all logged to the card. They are in the other flash memory, inside the unit, a memory that's always there, so it works regardless of whether you have any card or not. Why is that a problem to you? First reason is, the memory will be at some time to small, and part of the track will be deleted.E.g. at a 2 months trip through New Zealand I doubt that a log with 20 times 10000 points would correctly log the whole journey. Sometimes, in uninhabited areas on the southern island, I tracked every second or every 10 meters, instead of automatically, so many trackpoints are collected in a given time interval. At the end of the journey I have a detailed report of tracks, day by day. Second, but most important: At our emergency service we do not rely on that a GPS unit always will come back undamaged from every operation, but we rely at least on that the SD-card is undestroyed and the data on it are readable. If the GPS unit is damaged in the Colorado case, all track data are lost. This is a severe flaw for us. If the GPS unit is damaged in the 60 CSX case, in nearly all cases the track data are still readable on the SD-card. Based on the logs we have an exact calendar, which operations happened on every day of the year, and a map with the respective tracklogs is just one mouseclick away. We need the units for really serious emergency cases and their documentation. That leads to the next point: We need that, because nobody here in the emergency unit trusts any computerprogram which reduces trackpoints automatically.The reduction, if any, is done later manually with a track management software. However, the original tracks are always archived. I bet, that if you go along a circle with 20 meters diameter, the software will remove the trackpoints or some of them, because it believes it is just noise. This is to dangerous, we need to rely on the fact that every single trackpoint is logged, and especially logged to a removable SD-card, and not to the unit itself which may be destroyed. Cheers, NZ

All that is of no use to me.One of the main reasons to buy the 60 CSX was, that it can be used as a simple, but effective tracklogger, and I don't need to care about this feature, the trackpoints are just there on the SD card, and I can rely on that nothing is missed. It especially disturbs me that it looks like the Colorado doesn't log on the SD card, only the active log seems to be there, and that there seems to be no continuous automatic logging on the SD card. I also don't want something like an automatic filter which reduces the trackpoints with some algorithm. I just need every single trackpoint continuously logged to the SD card, regardless if noise or receiver drift! So it looks like the Colorado is not the device for me, because for me this is an absolute killer feature, and I'll not own and use a 2nd GPS device, just because my new Super-GPS is not able to log like it's predecessor.

Hmm,but what if I don't want USB mode on my Computer ? I want to have it connected to my Laptop and run e.g. nroute, and let the Colorado behave as a GPS, and not as USB connected disk ?

For me, no doubt: the 60 csx. I have the impression, that Garmin has some problems (small, but still problems) with the mtk receiver, both in the new etrexes (vista, legend) or the colorado. Since more than one year I don't have any issues with the 60 CSX and it's sirf receiver. I also prefer the front buttons. I use eneloop accus and have no problems with battery time, though the Vista might be better here.

And, however, try to learn what a course pointer is, because at some time you may need it.

Meanwhile I discovered at least one enhancement: Here in Austria Egnos works now for the first time without a problem. The CSX finds Egnos satellites and displays the other satellite bars with a "D". This was never possible with version 2.90. However, because it doesn't buy me anything, I just tried it out and saw it works, but turned it off again. Just wanted to inform you. Maybe there are also other enhancements, but there are still no release notes available. Cheers, NZ

Hi, just discovered that SIRF software 3.0 is available via web-updater (but still not in the Garmin manual download area). Anybody here who knows what the enhancements are ? Thx, NZ

Sounds great!Would be nice to have that on the 60 csx. I think that would fulfill all requests I heard of.

Yes, this would be an absolutely necessary feature for a unit with data-cards.It should be possible to read tracks and routes from the SD-card on the unit, and the artificial limits of 500 or 250 points should be lifted, or at least extended. To set up the tracks to Card:- Menu-Menu-Tracks-Entr-Setuo-Entr-Data Card Setuo-Entr-Select log track to data card! To view the tracks Conect unit to PC via USB Menu-Menu-Setup-Entr-Interface-Entr-USB Mass Storage-Enter Then look for the new drive on the PC for your SD card Each individual daily track is kept until you delete or moved! Each track is viewed in MapSource. This is not the requested function. My opinion is, the tracklog on the datacard is the minimum, what a unit with a datacard should be able to do - and it is now on the market for nearly 2 years.What freeday wants (and many others, including me, too), is, that there should be not only 20 saved tracks and/or 50 saved routes in the internal memory with all the waypoint limits, but that tracks and routes should be able to be loaded from the data-card, with extended waypoint limits (instead of 500/250 it would be good to have at least 1000/1000 or so, but I don't know if the unit-processor is powerful enough for that). Higher limits would be, of course, better. Cheers, nz

It's not documented, but if you put the 60CSx in the "fixed elevation" mode it will record the GPS elevation in the track log. Unfortunately, the values displayed in the data fields will still be the barometric elevation. I want to repeat that, because many people don't know that.I tracked the altitude without problems with a CSX at a flight from Paris to Vienna, using the "fixed elevation" setting.

This works fine for the tracklog as described by Hertzog: I recorded a flight from Paris to Vienna that way and generated a kmz-file for Google Earth from the tracklog, it looks great looking at the track in a height of 35000 feet, and seeing exactly the touchdown point at the landing and things like that.Unfortunately there is no datafield for GPS-elevation, so if you want to see it directly during the flight, I know only the way via the satellite page, and pressing menu. Unfortunately it's not possible to upload files here, so that I could show you the kmz-file as a sample for the correctly working GPS-elevation for the tracklog.

Though good batteries and spare batteries are important, they are useless, if you are outdoors for weeks and have no chance to recharge. Therefore for serious outdoor jobs I strongly recommend solio: http://www.solio.com/v2/ It's absolutely lightweight and works great!

Hi, possibly you know this already, but I didn't, and wanted to forward the recommendation from a friend about this free Garmin software. I have a laptop with no serial port, and had the need to connect my GPS with USB cable, but NMEA data comes only via serial interface. Looking for a solution to simulate a COM port receiving NMEA data my friend pointed me to Garmins free "spanner" program. Though it can only be found on the download page for the GPS 18, it works fine with my GPSMAP 60 CSX, too! And I believe it will work with any Garmin USB unit, just give it a try! When you start it, it looks for USB attached Garmin units, asks you which one you want to use, you select it and click the start button, and voila: get a virtual COM port receiving NMEA data! I really like it a lot and use it now since a week, and it works fine, therefore I'm posting it here now.

I am curious as to why you need to re-calibrate at every cache or are you joking? Caliberation is only required with a change of batteries as far as I understand it. Agreed.I don't have any problems with the compass (3.0/2.90).

But this is already possible.Just make e.g. your topo maps transparent and activate them together with Citynavigator. Then you will have both on your display. I do that since I started using the topo maps (used only CN at first).