rmm200

There are some reports you get a little better life out of B - but that might just be because they are newer stock. Either should work fine - they are both the extended version. Robert

My own expectation would be that when I buy a boxed product, the map data is 1-2 years out of date. Six months on the shelf, 6 months testing at Garmin, and 6 months inside Navteq release cyle. Navteq releases new packages on a 6 month cycle (from their web site). Garmin has their own product release cycle; I would expect them to pick up the map release that best aligns to the Garmin cycle. Spend 6 months or so testing it on their bazillion models and then box it and ship to distributors. Someone like me buys it about 6 months after initial release. Maybe a Garmin lurker can provide the Navteq release date currently shipping from Garmin. I would love to learn that the data is a lot more current. Robert

It says worlds about the state of GPS handheld units, in that the most important criteria may be how it feels in your hand. Both Magellan and Garmin are durable and accurate. Either would serve you well. Features are similar between the two as you go up in price. Good SD card support would be important to me. Robert

I think the most useful concept I have picked up from this thread is don't bother setting the barometric altimiter to the actual elevation - just set it to zero (easier by far), and use it as a relative offset from your starting point (trail head, parking lot, etc.) That would not have occured to me from just reading the directions... Robert

Putting in a shameless plug for explorist - when you plug in the USB cable, the Explorist shows up as a disk drive. You can create folders directly on the SD card, or copy files to/from the internal Explorist memory or the SD card. Performance is good too. Robert

Related question for my Explorist 600 with a barometer and a pressure altimeter: How is this best used? Set the altimeter when you start a hike, and trust it only for short intervals like an hour? I could see it useful on cache instructions, like climb down the cliff 40 feet, where GPS really does not help. It seems like variations in air pressure make it unreliable for longer periods. And never bother watching it in a building pressurized by air conditioning - you will think you are in an elevator. Robert

Great thing about the explorist is the file system is so flexible. Just for a test, you might try cutting a region to match your home state. Put it in a folder of that name. Make this one active and see if map loading and POI searches are faster. I would love to hear the results. Robert

Not the standard T720 battery - the high capacity one. Robert

I got the Magellan suction cup mount for the Explorist 600 and I only have one question: What do I need to do to the Magellan clip to use it with the RAM mount? What RAM pieces do I need to buy? The short rigid arm looks less bouncy than the flexible arm. If shipping / postage was not such a hassle, I would send the Magellan mount back. Robert

Just to put a plug in for the Magellan Explorist LI batteries. These units will take the Motorola 720 1100mah batteries which run $5-10 now on EBay. I picked up a couple and use an old cell phone as a charger. Battery life on these is about 14 hours per charge. And the Magellan carrying case has room for a second battery. I like this arrangement better than AAs. Very nice form factor. Robert

I admit I am confused by your description; you should get a topo line for every 50 meters vertical displacement. In a large flat area you get none. Cliffs of Dover should have a whole bunch right next to each other. Why would you expect a topo line every 200 feet linear distance? Robert

I would be concerned that you transferred 300 megs from the topo map. That sounds like you are doing the entire country in one region. You might find better performance if you cut a region to match what you are actually using. Northern California, for me, runs 16-22 meg. I have it in a region folder on the GPS I named San Francisco. With a one gig SD card, capacity is not a problem, and I could download the entire country in similar sized regions. I just have not needed to. Robert

Thanks NDA! I modified my original question out from under you... This is MapSend 1.0, using options as you surmised. MapSend only lists 4 of these 18 com ports: 1 (mouse), 3 (was internal modem), 8 (bluetooth) and 9 (bluetooth). It gives you no way to select a specific port not listed. Autodetect did not find the GPS. I am guessing Map Send was not written to expect two digit com port numbers. Robert

I have a Magellan Explorist 600, which connects to the computer through a USB port. The Magellan can be set to NMEA data transfer, V2.1 GSA, and is supposed to look like a serial port. Magellan installs their driver as a modem, on the first free com port. In my case it is com18. NMEA data shows up OK on Hyperterminal. MapSend does not seem to check com ports above com9, and does not detect my unit. Anyone know how to determine what is using all the com ports, or how to free them? My best idea so far is to disable the one com port user I know, the internal modem on port 3, and force the explorist to use that. Thanks! Robert

I have a new 600, upgraded to 2.03 firmware. Add me to the list of people with calibration problems. When powered on, the thermometer would read 72 degrees. This would creep up slowly until it stopped about 84 degrees after 10 minutes. This was in my house; room temperature was about 72. I would hit calibrate, set it to 72, and within about 5 seconds it would jump back to 84. Using the secret menu 22 (thanks!) reset calibration seems to have fixed it. No more temperature drift. I am not convinced to compass is really pointing North now after calibrating it; I need to find a good reference. It looks about 10 degrees off to me. I wish I could say for sure my calibration issue was related to the upgrade. Unfortunately, I did not use it long enough out of the box to check. If you have a 600, be sure to check for problems like this after the upgrade. Robert