Didjerrydo

I posted a topic a few days ago on my Colorado 300's clock failing to continue keeping time when the unit was turned off. Well, I found this issue present on three 300's that we recieved here at the store. All of them had to be returned to Garmin as defective. All these units were low serial # units (16900100-169000600) but all were updated to the current software but still had this issue. Finally, I acquired a "newer" unit (169005021) which seemed to be OK, as far as its clock function, for several days but this morning when I booted it up it's clock also had dropped 8 hours and 44 minutes overnight! Is this behavior something that just sporadically happens in any GPS unit? I can't believe I'm seeing this in unit after unit. What could be going on here anyway? P.S. Oops, sorry I called it a Colorado 330 in the topic title. It won't let me edit the title apparently.

Marky, does your barometer log data with the unit off and SAVE ALWAYS chosen? If not then there is a good chance you have the "M". You should set it tonight before bed and check to see if there is any dynamic data in your barometer graph in the a.m. If you see a straight line - no data. My previous units all logged data successfully in the off modus. You can also watch for the flickering backlight at around 15 minutes after shutdown (with barometer set to log data) and random intervals thereafter. Neither of my pevious units did this. do you also have the serial number of unit 1+2 ? I have serial # 169005012, it has "M" chipset, flickers, works right logging pressure with unit off + alarm clock running.

You don't even need to use a knife, as a matter of fact, I wouldn't, due to possibly cutting the unit or wheel. Simply clasp it with your fingernails and pull it off. It's easily done and you don't risk damaging the unit.

.......... I'm guessing that if the Colorado zoomed in as far as the 60CSx people would be happy? NO,absolutely NOT.........reaching that lofty goal is impossible because opinions are too varied as to what is "perfect", and it is obvious that there are a great number of people that absolutely do not understand the difference between a compass and a bearing pointer (or course pointer option). ........back to the OP's subject...... that "wandering around" is the result of the higher sensitivity chip. (60 & 76 x series also) It's picking up position "noise" that also is reflected in odometer and speed reading "errors". People complain about that too. However, the same people love the way the new units maintain lock under cover. If you can't understand WHY it's doing WHAT it's doing, and don't like it , then you'll just have to go back to an older unit with the less sensitive chip. I understand that in the "auto archiving" process, the new Colorado "filters out" that "position noise" or wandering around. However, Note that in this forum, there have already been complaints about that too! OK, fair enough, that makes sense. That was all I was asking. I didn't realize that there was a trade off there. I suppose that's a good trade if it has to do that. Does this also account for its inability to "average" a waypoint?

Well, what's your take on the maximum 80' zooming in on the Colorado? I can't believe that a new whizz-bang unit has totally taken a step backwards to this level. Seems as though this is really going to be a terrible hinderance when geocaching?

I'm noticing that the Colorado 300's position seems to wander all over the place when it is left at a stationary position and the map is zoomed in to the 80' scale. This makes me think of the pre-2000 years when "selective availability" was in effect and civilian GPS units gave rather evasive positions due to the DOD scrambling the signals. Perhaps, if this is inherent in these units themselves and maybe this is why Garmin chose to not let the map scaling be zoomed in any tighter than 80', instead of the 20' scale with previous units? Are owners of earlier units also seeing this wandering or is this unique to the Colorados?

Thanks, I'm glad that someone reading this topic actually responded intelligently and informatively and acts like an adult!

I think you nailed it there. The card slot O-ring is the weak link here I believe.

After looking at mine closely, this is what I'd expect. The areas under the cover that are outside the two areas sealed by the rubber gaskets will get wet, but it shouldn't cause any harm. I think the unit in this case may have been defective, or the back was incorrectly installed (which I doubt though, it doesn't seem possible to me to latch the back without it being in the proper position). I personally think you (the OP) would be doing your customers a disservice telling them that the unit does not meet IPX7. That's just my opinion though. --Marky Actually, wheather it meets the IXP7 specs or not isn't what I'm talking about here, it just seems to me that if a unit floods that easily, there's going to be big problems down the line for Garmin. As far as the back not being fully "seated" I made sure it was fully pushed up onto the unit as far as I could get it prior to my ill-fated demonstration. I can see where if it wasn't, water could get up into the card slot because the O-ring wouldn't be seated around the mouth of the slot. Clamping down the clasp should fully seat this O-ring around this area anyway.

I think I'll just honestly tell customers about this experience and warn them about how easily the unit can be damaged by water. If they are willing to take this risk and be somewhat protective of it, then fine. In the past, I've always bragged on Garmin's good water resistance. Surely they will rework this unit to correct this issue if they're going to tout it as their super-duper, rough & tough, all round outdoor handheld!

I'm also not so sure that some water didn't enter under the rubber upper "deck" because there seemed to be water coming out of that area also, but look at the strange configuration of the area on the back of the body just below the battery compartment. Looks to me like water can get directly into the innards through the cover's latch and these holes!

While showing a customer in our store a Colorado 300, I did a little demonstration that I've done many times in the past with other Garmin handheld GPS units. We have a small goldfish pond at the front of the store into which I dipped a Colorado 300 about a foot deep for around 10 seconds. I brought the unit out and pushed the power switch to find it totally dead! The screen flickered a few seconds and quit. Upon removing the back, I found water inside the unit. I removed the batteries and SD card then used a dust removal product to blow out the card slot and battery compartment as thoroughly as I could, but to no avail. This amazed me to discover that this unit, that is supposed to withstand a 1 meter submersion for 30 minutes, leaked from this quick dunk! Previous models never had a problem with this. As a matter of fact, in dealing with Garmin handhelds for over 15 years, I've never seen a single unit with water damage and we've sold many,many units over the years which have been used very hard. A co-worker here has a 60 CX which mounted on his motorcycle and rides in pouring rain and has never had a problem with water! Upon closer examination, it seems like the opening in the back where the latch engages with the body is the problem. It's wide open for water to enter. This oversight in the unit's design seems unbelievable! I called Garmin and told them what happened and they said to send it in for replacement, but said that I shouldn't have done this and that the unit should never be submerged whatsoever. Apparently the Colorado units don't have the water resistance, let alone waterproofness ,as stated in the specifications, of other Garmin handhelds. Anyone with a Colorado should be aware of this and realize that the "IXP7" rating apparently doesn't mean much and is certainly not meant to be taken literally!

You know, I actually think that older software version gave better battery life with rechargables than the current version for some reason!

I have pretty much given up on trying to use any form, or milliamp hour rating, of rechargables in my Colorado 300. It seems that the only battery type worth using is either lithium or primo grade alkalines (Rabbit batteries or Copper Tops). I know Garmin apparently has a lot of tweaking to do concerning power managment on these units, but is anyone getting more than 4 or 5 hours of use from rechargables in thier Colorados?

At least on my computer, as Map Source builds a very large mapset (3848 maps) for loading into a 4 GB SDHC card, the shown time to load actually gets longer as the percentage complete slowly increases. I am loading this to the card in a card reader, not thru the Colorado itself by the way. This is a combination of City Nav NT plus Topo 2008 maps. Does anyone have an answer for this strange situation? 'Wonder which one is right?

Regarding the appropriatess of the nature of my response in Post #6, I see it as no less appropriate than the negative, uninformed drivel immediately above. Later in the day, most likely this evening, I will post a response germane to my interpretation of the original subject. What is your point here, simply to make trouble and genetate heated responses? I thought a forum such as this was to help people with problems with GPS units and activities concerning them. Most participants have enough sense to use it for its intended purpose and show courtesy to fellow posters, not pick at their spelling or grammer. If all you are on here for is to irritate other people and cause trouble, why don't you do your thing elsewhere. I'm sure most folks would appreciate that!

You sound like a really nice person that I would like to know! I've seen this attitude a lot on this forum. I've never encountered this on any other forum anywhere before. This tells me a lot about several of the participants here!

For the record, the contour levels depends upon zoom level and detail setting. At highest detail and close zoom, T7 will display 10 foot contours. The Topoquads tend to be better for showing water detail that includes streams, ponds, and lakes. On the other side of the coin, they are dated to a degree that the T7 maps usually have more current street data. They complement each other nicely, but I would agree that many people will be entirely satisfied with just the T7 data alone. Didjerrydo, is this information relevant to your question or have we hijacked your thread? I'm not aware that Garmin has greater 1:24000 coverage in the works, but I'm just an interested GPS user. I would think as a dealer you might have potentially more inside news access than most of us. It seems that those of us happy with Delorme's PN-20/Topo7 offering validate that there is a market niche such as you describe. No, that's good info to know though, but it does look like Garmin would see the bucks to be made here unless there's some technical issue that keeps them from doing this.

Actually, all USGS 1:24,00 quads if our area (Western, NC) is in either 20' or 40' contour lines.

After wrestling with the many, many issues that need fixing on the Colorado 300, I began to wonder if Garmin intentionally puts new units out there knowing in advance that they will change certain features and functions at a later pre-determined date? Surely lots of the issues with this unit were pretty obvious and would have been seen by the engineers and tech wizzards that develop these units. Is there a purpose in doing this or is it just a result of rushing s a product to market half baked?

I am a Garmin dealer here in Western North Carolina (Asheville area) and there is never a day that passes that someone doesn't ask for a 1:24,000 topographic software to load into their Garmin GPS unit. This area of Pisgah National Forest (which is gorgeous but not a national park) is a great hiking & backpacking area and if Garmin would offer a product loke this it would sell like hot cakes here. I can't understand, now that their units have higher resolution color displays, faster processors and more memory capacities, why this hasn't happened? We even brought in a some of the new Magellan Tritons due to the fact that they could utilize the National Geographic 1:24,000 software, but have been rather dissapointed with them. So far, every one we've sold has been returned by very dissasitisfied customers. Looks to me like Garmin is really missing the boat here by not offering this product. There's many vast tracts of National Forest areas all over the country where folks do outdoor activities that needs better mapping than the 1:24,000 stuff that's not that great to most outdoor enthusiasts who have always used USGS 1:24,00 paper maps. After all, USGS has already done all the hard work for them and it's not even copyrighted!

I just purchased 8 2900 mAh NiMH batteries from the Battery Barn for my Colorado 300 thinking that since they were 2900 mAh that they'd perform similar to Lithium AA's which are 2900 also. Boy was I dissapointed! These things are good for about 2-4 hours at best. Of course I know that the Colorado's seem th have issues with rechargables but I thought this was a bit ridiculous. The only good thing was they were cheap (about $7.95 for 4). Has anybody else tried these batteries and had any better luck?

Why starting a second topic about that ? Because, it would be interesting to see how many defective Colorado's are out there and hoe widespread this issue is! What's wrong with that? What's wrong with it is that there is ALREADY a thread about this exact issue. SEARCH is your friend. But... I know someone will continue this thread without searching unless there's some handholding involved, so... This is the clock thread. And he was also the starter of that other thread If this is the hostile atmosphere of participants in this forum when one only requests a survey of owners out there that might be experiencing this issue, I will bow out as of this post. There's bound to be less agressive users elsewhere!