Suscrofa

Wehn you need a gun, then you really need it and the best ! Same for GPS ! I wouldn't trust my life to a flimsy complicated gadget outside of a city. Didn't notice that many power outlets on trees either. But yes, the market segment for standard GPS is shrinking as for paper maps and simple compass yet they are still there.

First try with an other PC, running XP for example. Strange that a defective external USB hardware would lead to a Vista crash but again, Vista is such a pain, no one knows for sure.

Like 97% of the world population I don't mind about these stupid and archaic measures like miles, feet, yards ! They should be removed from the standard software and thus reduce the opportunities for the programmers to make mistakes. Besides, I can see that the few still using them don't even master them, being unable to convert from one to an other, compute with them or understand what a map scale is ! One again, the km is NOT a different unit, the only unit of length is the meter ! k means a thousand and avoid writing it. But yes, the display should try to adjust in order to display the maximum number of significant digits. For example autorange Volmeters, frequency-meter etc... do it But to display 0.001 km instead of 1 m is not really an issue. I have also asked Garmin to do that but so far, no luck either.

by reading !

I am desperatly looking for a case for may 60CX which works fine but has the buttons worns off, the top rubber part decaying !

It's only my own experience. The gps by me is used in the city not often, especially in large, with tall buildings and narrow streets, but the result I got greatly surprised: 1. Firmware 4.0/3.0: track rides on the roofs of houses 2. 4.0/2.90: track jumps but slightly less 3. 3.70/2.90: - almost no jumps!!! Time between testings is the same up to 5 minutes, the state of the sky (clouds, etc.) roughly the same, route the same. These results is the main reason why I reverted to 3.70/2.90. Tests 5 min apart ? If there was a real issue, many more people would have noticed it ! I have 4.0/3.0 and no problem ! But I don't expect to have good results when the satellites geometry is poor and not many in sights. Did you check that ? And tracks have always been jumpy in poor condition like in cities. SIgnal is blocked and bounce in an erratic manner.

It's a matter of semantics, but I would say that if there is any conversion necessary, no matter how trivial, the units have changed. If you are recording distances in a list, and they are all the same unit, you can specify that unit at the top of the column. You can't do that if some are in m and some in km. If you need to specify it, it's a different unit. But if you are driving and need to glance at the display to know how far the next turn is, you may not want to need to squint at the units identifier. They can be annoying, but they keep you on your toes. You always need to be rigorous about your units. You can't just get lazy because it's all "metric". If you're told a vehicle is going "35", you'd better know whether that's in km/h or m/s. It's not that big of a leap from there to imperial units. It is NOT a matter of semantics ! If your earn 1K dollars, the unit is still the dollars !!! Please read the definitions related to these prefix. Google gives tons of URL plus the NIST site. Even ebay knows that: http://reviews.ebay.com/Mega-kilo-milli-an...000000008751267 No big deal to mix km and m !!!! Are you familiar with them ? On a car display, if you see distance 1.02 km you know it is one km twenty m ! Anyone knows that, at least outside of the US ! Common usage for car is km/h so 35 implies 35km/h. It is why most speed limit panels don't show the unit. True, in Europe some guy tried to contest a police ticket based on the fact that the legal units being the m, kilogramm, s, A, 50 would mean 50m/s !!! He lost because of what I just said above. Oh by the way, metric is now mandatory in medecine as too many errors screwing up conversion from pound to kg and therefore prescritpion errors as they are computed in mg per kg of body mass. We are in the 21° century !

I am always amazed how can people issue definitive statement like this topic title while so many other parameters may be the cause !

Just a clarification, there is only one unit of length, the meter, kilo, mega, centi, micro ... are just a way to represent factor of 10 but do not define "new" units (we use a decimal based numbering system) ! This is not often understood. Lack of proper education in science and technology. Even Garmin eng. as they let you set the GPS to display in meter or kilometer ! This is a non sense, they should always try to display with the maximum number of significant digits and adjust the display accordingly to show km or m ! It is annoying for ex. for distance as you really loose accuracy if you set the display to km then come closer to your target. Of course one can't beat the screwing up of using imperial units !

And how accurate is this conversion ? Because for survey, are you still using the antique inch or the less antique one defined as 25.4mm exactly ?

ANd how many feet is 3/8" ? And we are in the twenty first century !

Ever heard about "backup" ? How can Garmin be held responsible for a lack of proper user care and foresight ?

I see the almanac file, but not the planning software. Is it free? If so, where is it at? Here it is: http://www.trimble.com/planningsoftware_ts.asp

Get the Trimble planning software, update the almanach, set up your location in order to plan for the best time to cache. Of course, it won't help if the cache has been placed a bad day ! http://www.trimble.com/gpsdataresources.shtml Beats up horoscope and fortune teller.

Sorry, feet mean nothing to me when it comes to distance except when I use mine to walk !

You confuse accuracy and number of displayed digits. Besides, accuracy in inch and feet is a non sense ! We are in the 21° century. 2m is at best what one can expect from a regular GPS. If you happen to be a few cm from a cache, just pure luck. Besides what about the "accuracy" of the cache location ?

Every other day the very same question pops up regarding "accuracy" that often is not even understood ! Why can't people read the user manual and do a bit of search on the forum ?

Yes your 60CX has no "accuracy", normal "accuracy" should be below one rod, depending on temperature !

What kind of gps unit do you have?? In general, make sure your unit is setup for wgs84 as the datum. I'm not sure what the format of the coordinates of the timble look like - can you post those here? I have a Garmin etrex legend HCx (no problem). The application on my phone is the Geocache Navigator by Trimble. The Garmin shows co-ords as on Groundspeak eg Nxx.xx.xxx Exx.xx.xxx but Trimble comes up with Nxx.xx.xx.xx Exx.xx.xx.xx AHA! I've changed Trimble to show degrees and minutes, not seconds- now it looks the same. (Settings/Location Format) Many Thanks! Would be a lot simpler to standardise on decimal degree which is the way it is stored internally and for transfer ! Simpler for computation too. ! But when a few percent of the world population is still using archaic and even harder to use inch, feet, yards, furlong, miles etc.... one wonder when logic will prevail

As I said, I used that in some cases in geocaching . For example, due to various errors, the cache appears located in an area. One can scan it easily using UTM, going S to N then a few step East then back N to S. The arithmetic is simple, as the square I scan is about 30m ! Of course if you try to use inch, feet, furlong, yes it becomes complicated !

This method of using coordinates is useful if you use UTM. So you know that you are that many meters North and West, away from the cache instead of having the direction needle playing a fan. I have used that in some case but with degrees, not so handy

Webupdater, Vista could screw things up when used to update the GPS but how could theyr have any inluence once the SIRF chipset software has been installed sucessfully and is used stand alone ???? My 60CX lost its SIRF firmware recently, first time after 3 years of use and soft upgrade. The firmware is stored in EEPROM. Maybe for unknow reason it got corrupted (power glitch when turning ON/OFF for ex) Unless it happens again, I am not worried. It was just a reminder that failure exists and always plan for a backup, in this case, to carry a compass and a map should I venture in the wild ! See the other thread for the solution. If it keeps happening, too bad,time to get a new GPS.

Don't forget the 2m thick concrete walls, plus 10cm lead for the enclosure around the battery !

Remove the micro SD card when you do any updates, just to remove any possible conflicts. They only way to fix this issue(chipset listed as 0.00) is to install the chipset software manually. I'm not sure why but both the people I helped recently fix this issue also couln't get the chipset to update with the most current from this website. http://www.gawisp.com/perry/chipset_firmware/Type_G/ They ended up loading the older 2.90 chipset and then were able to use the webupdater to get the most current. Just happended exactly the same thing to me today (SOFT 4.0 chips et 0.00s ! Master reset to no avail ! Garmin firmware no better luck ! Gee I was upset ! Came across this post, loaded the perry chipset et voila ! WORKING ! THANKS THANKS ! PS: Of course had to use an old PC running XP as my current portable on Vista couldn't load anything ! Did not even bother to look further, didn't install Mapsource either as I WANT TO GET RID OF THIS VISTA NON SENSE. I don't give a dadgum about how better looking Vista is, it is a HOG, too many trouble with too many soft I need and I am sick and tired to always look for solutions. After 30 years in computer, I grew up very tired that it is always such a pain for such gain ! I don't find that funny anymore !

I too would like to replace the buttons and the case ! I am confident that hobbyist provided they don't have two left hands, can do it. I have fixed more complicated stuff. I don't feel like paying 150 USD while a new can be bought for 200. In case we fail, we still can buy a new one and keep the broken one for spares ! What about a GPS 60 used for display in store ? I guess they are just an empty case ?