rufhausen

Regarding price, are you taking into account the current rebate offer of $50 for the garmin color units? I started out with the regular Vista, but returned it for the Legend C(Link). Price difference on Amazon: Vista: $224 Legend C: $289 - $50 rebate = $239. Well worth the $15 for USB, faster everything, and the color screen.

I'm trying to understand the usefulness and implementation of the "proximity waypoints" feature on my Legend C. The manual states it's useful for avoiding locations. It seems that it would be much more useful if I could draw a polygon in mapsource over some private property, toxic waste dump, etc. instead of relying on individual points. I thought maybe this could be effectively done by "connecting the dots" with the mapsource route drawing tool, but there's no way to add the route itself to the proximity settings, so adding each waypoint could be very tedious. I suppose adding 2 or 3 waypoints in the appropriate location might provide enough coverage of the area depending on it's shape, but I was hoping someone could suggest a better way.

Yes. Before I had to turn mine off, the GPSr showed a steady 500mph @ 35,000 ft. It was cool to be able to use the map to identify some of the towns, etc. I was looking at below.

I was told to turn mine off on a recent United flight from Chicago to San Diego. I was also told by the flight attendant that it needed to state on the unit something about it being OK for airline use before they would allow it to be turned on. My Garmin etrex Legend C doesn't say anything aside from "made in taiwan".

Exactly. The "Stay On" setting is automatically set when using an external power source, which I think is a good thing. A "stay on and set brightness to 100%" setting when detecting an external power source would solve the problem, while still resetting brightness to 0 after a power cycle while on batteries if that is desirable for whatever reason. Hey, I'm just glad that this is the extent of my complaints. I'd rather focus on the minutiae, than "it won't power up".

Another thing... The road locations on the R & R map appear to be off by quite a bit in places, even for long-established Interstates. Since I got the unit and installed R & R a couple of weeks ago, I've done a lot of driving in both San Diego and Indianapolis and noticed it in both locals. I haven't really used it with only the base map, so I"m not sure if it's better, but can I definitely expect City Select to be more accurate (I'm already sure it will be much more up-to-date)? I'm making the assumption (never a good idea) that roads that already appear on the basemap are superseded by the version of these roads on whatever maps I download to the unit.

That makes sense then. I re-read the message when the unit boots up and I guess it's refering to the base map. Thanks.

I purchased a copy of Roads & Recreation off eBay because I wanted a more detailed map than the basemap and wasn't ready to pay the extra cash for City Select. I noticed that R & R is "routable", as it mentions this when the unit starts up and I can tell it to autoroute to a waypoint and it calculates the route, etc, etc.. I know that R & R is old and discontinued, but whenever I use the autoroute feature, it will ALWAYS choose a route using the interstate no matter if that's the best route or not. I can be a few blocks from the waypoint and it will tell me to go 2 miles in the other direction to get on the interestate. My question is...Is this solely the result of R&R being old and not very good at autorouting or will autorouting perform just as poorly with City Select on my unit? Thx.

I forwarded my comments to Garmin. Curious - how often have they updated the firmware for this unit so far? I can read the change history here: http://www.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=577 However, there are no dates to tell me how often these updates tend to be released.

I have a new Legend C and am really happy with it so far, but there is one minor annoyance. I purchased a car power adaptor mainly so I could have the backlighting on all the time in the car since the screen is a little dark without it, and having it on with batteries would drain them too quickly (otherwise, the battery life is great). However, everytime I turn on the Legend, I have to keep hitting the power button to achieve 100% backlighting. Shouldn't there be a way to default to 100%? There is, in fact, a Backlight Level setting in the display setup menu. However, this will always defaults back to 0 when the unit is powered down and back up. Am I missing something? I guess it would also be nice if the unit would automatically power on when an external power source is detected, so it would come on automatically when I turn on the car. I would think that in most situations, when u connect an external power source, you intend on using the unit immediately anyway.

Most of the ones I see are not sized specifically for the Legend C or vista C, so the buttons and display may not be fully accessible or it just won't fit snugly. I'm suprised Garmin apparently doesn't offer one. Instead, I think they provide the one for the B/W legend and vista (different dimensions) as an accessory.

I'm wondering the same thing for a Legend C. These are the only ones I see on eBay.

On Amazon (where I purchased the Vista), the price comparison is: Vista: $224 Legend C: $289 - $50 rebate = $239. I went ahead and boxed up the Vista and ordered the Legend C. The potential for improved reception seals the deal right there. I mountain bike under a lot of tree cover. I won't expect miracles though. The part #s for the car mount are the same, so that's a bonus. Thanks for the input.

I purchased my first GPS unit, a etrex Vista (not the C), last week. It seemed to match the price/feature level I was looking for. However, I've experienced 3 random "power-offs" already (I've read the threads addressing this) and I'm concerned about a couple of other things: - I'm guessing this model has been around a while and the hardware could be a bit dated. - The last firmware update on Garmin site is dated 12/2003. This seems like a long time since an update compared with other units. Are they done updating this model? Two of the features I thought I'd like with the Vista are the "off-line" compass and the barometric altimeter. However, I've found the compass requires constant re-calibration. Now I just realized that I could get the Legend C for about the same price as the Vista after rebate. If the compass and b. altimeter are non-factors, am I missing out on anything by exchanging the Vista for the Legend C? Does the Garmin etrex car mount work with both? Thanks in advance for any thoughts. These forums have been invaluable so far.