skramblr

Ah, the project that went nowhere.... http://www.gpsinfo.ru/tuxgps/index_e.php

Actually, that is what brought me here. Emails to Magellan are either answered by people can't solve the problem. Or the emails are totally ignored after the first reply and you never hear from them again. Example reply received today: At this point all I could do is pass it along to my supervisor to forward to the appropriate department. After such comments in the past, the requested changes almost never happen.... You also are never given the chance to correspond with possibly mythical 'the supervisor'. BTW, my brother worked in tech support for a computer company for a while. They almost never forwarded anything on to a supervisor. Just makes more work.

Hardware top notch - neck and neck with Garmin (IMHO). But the software. Egad! It's not just the firmware bugs that they don't fix. Mapsend! I have a very old copy of Mapsend Streets (earlier than Mapsend S&D) - the original mapsend (I think). The software looks identical to today's latest releases. They've done almost nothing to it over the years. Just stick a feature in here and there. I really wonder if they fired all the software engineers.... I think it's apparent, when you see all the posts about how people are having issues even getting it to run. You click on it to run it and for many people it just won't run (unless you start closing down other open apps). Many of these people try to get assistance from tech support - but of coarse they don't know anything about this problem and are no help.

Warning - Long editorial. I've been a big fan of Magellan since I first saw the Meridian line come out (replacing the M300 series). It had a big display, best reception of any GPS I'd used, they were very affordable and tech support was great. People were writing tools to modify this and that, tech support was outstanding, and firmware updates came out every few months to fix bugs or add features. Things kinda peaked a couple years later. Around the end of 2003, we had the Sportrak series out, color units were out, and Magellan did an incredible thing - they added street-routing capability to the Meridian and Sportrak. This gave these units a second wind and they continued to be some of the best GPS units on the market. But now it's 2006. Real tech support is almost non-existent. Sure, they'll tell you how to use your unit or issue you an RMA to send you unit in. But report an actual bug - it can take years for them to fix it (example: Street routing erasing your track file - broken in 2003 - fixed in 2005!). Most of the time when the tech support person finally understands your problem, they say it you're right and there is no fix - good day. No solution, work around, or even a note that they'll pass it on to the engineers. Website Maintained & FAQs - if you've been to their site, you'll find a hodgepodge of outdated materials mixed in with their new. Example - the new DirectRoute v3 is out, but it doesn't show up on their website online store. Still the old literature and appear to be selling the older version2. But if you call them they are selling v3, previewer is V3 maps, and V3 manuals are posted. Hmm... They used to fix lots of issues, even on out of warranty units (IE, they had a manufacturing glitch that causes blue blotches on the screen, said they would fix this manufacturing flaw on any unit - even out of warranty, but now charge $95 to fix their manufacturing glitch). So much for promises. The worst problem facing these units today - "Unit contains no basemap". It is incredible how I hear about this problem from people daily. Yes, every day. People are accidentally erasing their basemaps! This was never a problem until a couple years ago. This may be a bug in Magellan's update procedure that they introduced in the v5.xx firmware - and they aren't fixing it. I think they got their blinders on. Oh, and the best part is how to fix it? They say you have to send your unit in. Experience users know it is a simply file update, but Magellan won't send you that file and you have to send it in. So most users find the basemap file on the internet. I've even heard of a few users saying that Magellan wanted to charge them to fix the unit!! Um, release software that erases basemaps sometimes - then charge the customer to fix it? Now that's customer support! They did release some great new hardware (the eXplorist line). I have to agree the hardware is top notch, but to my horror they did not improve DirectRoute’s very basic street routing capability. What was a great new feature for the Meridian is now an Achilles’ heal for the eXplorist. The street routing stinks compared to the competition's offering. I had hoped to upgrade and continue to use Magellan products, but I'm pretty sure I've bought my last one. The completion has caught up and come out with new units that have all the features that once set Magellan apart. Add to that the better customer support and better software being offered, I can't justify staying with Magellan much longer. -Skramblr Author of the Meridian FAQ Admin of the Meridian Yahoo Group Once avid fan of Magellan

That sounds odd since my gold has loaded an early ver.of mapsend topo and and mapsend topo 3D but not at the same time. Sounds like the defective Topo3D problem... http://www.magellangps.com/en/support/prod...ndtopo3dusa.asp

I received Mapsend Topo 3D in the mail lst night. I've installed it and here are my first impressions: 3 Disk Set! Install CD 1, Install CD 2, Map Data CD Firmware Update CD (Mgold/Plat v5.35 & Color v5.34) - Darn! No new FW versions. Small flyer - reminder to register the program Large flyer - Note about FW upgrade CD and Max Map sizes Quick Reference Guide Typical Install - 1000MB (Disk 3 data not installed, runs slower) Full Install - 1600MB (Disk 3 still needed - copy protection check) Upon start, indicates firmware v5.34 or later is required to run Topo 3D. Trails!!! Not. The program boasts trail data from Trails.com. But what they don't mention is they didn't actually add any trails to the maps. What you do get is a bunch of POIs that mark things like trail heads and fishing spots. This will get you to the beginning of a trail, but it wont help you navigate it one bit. I picked a mountain bike trail and it listed the following type of info. Trail Name, State, Skill Level, Level, Technical Difficulty, Length, Trails.com URL It's all interesting, but pretty worthless. The 3D interface is kinda fun to play with, but it is only on the PC. There are no 3D features added to the GPS. Look to the photos section at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magellan_meridian/ for some photos. I uploaded some track data from riding my ATV in the woods. The dotted line on the map is not a road anymore, but more of a trail. It's interesting to note how closely my tracks seem to match the roads - good map data and good GPS reception in the woods! Other POIs - typical Topo terrain type POIs are there, as well as familiar POIs from DirectRoute (ATMs, Gas, Restaurant, Hotels, Camping). Compatibility with Meridian GPS (Green and Yellow) - The software does not list the basic model, but the maps work fine! Meridian Green or Yellow users finally have access to much better maps!!! More notes: Covers 48 continental states. Covers Hawaii Puerto Rico has roads, but no topo. Alaska has no Topo and only major Highways - no side streets Mexico has some major highway detail (but roads like I5 are cut-off at the US boarder and when the pick up again on the Mexico side, the roads are shifted (different map data?). Canada appears to have some major highway detail, but it disappears when you zoom in (program bug?). Track playback in 3D mode is kinda fun. In the overview mode, you can watch an image of a car driving up and down the hills along your track. With inside view, it puts you in the car and you drive along your track. There is one small issue. During playback it will occasionally pause. The higher the details settings, the bigger the pause. The faster the playback, the more frequent the pause. I doubt it's my system, as I have a 2.8Ghz P4, 1GB mem and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. I did a quick check, and during playback there is zero hard drive activity - so it's not caused by the program reading data from the hard drive. I've put in a support ticket on this item. Trails.com - Any POI from them has an URL you can click. It takes you to that trail's page on their site - where you are promptly told you must register to get any information. It offers a 14-day free trial, but when you try to sign up you must provide a credit card - so they can charge you $50 for an annual subscription (when you forget to cancel your membership after 14 days). I found this article on the web. http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/Dec/1100922.htm It states that you buyers will get a 3 month subscription to Trails.com. On the Mapsend Topo 3D product page on Magellan's website, it also has a trails.com logo with a note that you get a free trial subscription. But no mention about how to do that in the Mapsend Topo 3D software, not in the box, not on Magellan's website, and not on Trails.com website. I guess I have to put in a support request to Magellan to find out about that. Map size limit is increased! The flyer. The new map size limit in Topo 3D is ~240MB. I can create regions up to that size, if I go larger I get a message telling me the max size is 246,768 bytes.

You can't convert a route to a track on the Meridian. But why would you wan't to? Activate the route, it shows the route. You can also reverse the route, so you can travel it backwards.

Blue spots - contamination - process problem - drying out display doesn't remove the contamination, it just makes the spot go away.... until it gets moisture again. Unless you're planning on hermitically sealing the GPS, I don't think you can keep the moisuture out. That's a lot of work when Magellan seems to be willing to replace units for no charge. Some folks are saying the new displays are different as well.

FYI - on the street name issue. It turns out that directroute creates waypoint along the routes path that contains the manuever and street names. Remember that the GPS has a 200 waypoint limit on waypoints with descriptions? It appears that if you have 200 waypoints loaded, the route created will be missing the street names (which would have been stored in the description field for the waypoints). -Skramblr

Magellan officially supports 512MB SD cards. http://gpsinformation.net/mgoldreview/magellanbasemap.htm

Someone else just pointed out this issue to me the other day. Before you would sometimes have several roads with the same name, but not have a city listed. You'd also have roads listed with address ranges - and there would be a lot of these address ranged street names. With the new software they combined most of these addressed ranged roads into single road names that contain all the ranges. But, it appears they still have very long roads broken up. I can't find a reason why they would have done it. Same city, zip, sometimes just a large range, then a small one, then a medium one. Hmm... I don't see a work around for that one. Beeping - yup. Saw the same thing. If you set your proximity alarm to zero, then the alarms wil not longer come up. I think if you set the Beeper to no alarms, then there will also be no alarm. But that only helps if you want to turn alarms off. If you are running with alarms on, when the big 1/2 screen sized pop-up screen comes up, indicating the manuever - you can press any key and the alarm will stop and the pop-up box will go away. If you are not quick enough, then you'r stuck with having to hit a key and back out of it. Everyone should should put in a feature request to Magellan to fix it (make it like the backlight where any button just turns on the backlight & not execute the key command). On the third issue, on my GPS the list includes the the road name, an Icon indicating the left/right turn (no words), and the heading and distance.

Online the Meridian Gold goes for around $200 and the new DirectRoute software for $100. So, for $300 you get a mapping GPS w/maps. That's a great deal, plus you get the memory expandability. But of coarse, every GPS seems to have some features that others dont. In comparing the Meridian Gold to the GPSMap 60C, the extra $150-200 in hardware + $50 more in software gets you a more compact unit with slightly smallber, but higher resolution screen. You also get some custom geocaching features, proprietairy games (you can only play with other garmin users), much longer batter life (30hr vs 12hr), direct higher speed USB connectivity (instead of having to pull memory cards and put in USB readers), and a few calculated fields not available on the Meridian. There may be a few others I'm overlooking. Over time, I bet the gap in price between these two products will drop. The gold's price has dropped by about 1/3 in the last 2 years. -Skramblr

I often go on road trips and want all the restaurants, gas stations, rest stops and other POIs along the way. I also need basemaps for various countries I visit. The Detailed map alone for OR/WA takes up 44MB. I could upload sections of maps for various locations I plan to visit on each trip or keep my GPS connected to my laptop all the time, but that gets tiresome. It's soo much easier to just make a bunch of maps and put them on a single large SD card. I also get to save all my track histories and load the appropriate user waypoints for each area I visit, just by selecting files off the SD card.

A couple notes - Per an ealier posters comment, the firmware releases on Magellans website generally constitute major firmware releases with added features - always added feature on those upgrades. Separately, Magellan has minor firmware updates that are not posted. They are sometimes eMailed or offered on Firmware update CDs to fix specific problems. -Skramblr

The basemaps is also a very compressed map and not meant to be 100% accurate. IE, a road that curves back and forth slightly will only be a straight line. If you want detailed road data, you must buy a detailed mapping product.

I see a few misconceptions (or unclear messaging) in the above posts. The Meridians have an SD card slot. You can use Direct route to create single 64MB maps and load as many of those as you like onto the SD card. With the 60CS you'll need a computer with you. With 64MB maps you aren't likely to run out of space too quickly & if you do - the 54MB of maps would likely have run out on the 60CS and there is no other map to load? "Too large a mapset may slow down the Mericolor too." - Earlier Mapsend products were only meant to generate 16MB mapfiles - users tweaked the ini files to allow larger sizes and very large files were very slow. Directroute is designed to create 64MB maps (and I have and there is no slow down). Built in autorouting capability - The Magellans too have autorouting built into the new firmware (v5.xx). No special software required to enable that feature - although it is true the basemap is not currently routable and older Mapsend products did not include routing information (IE, the Mapsend S&D file for a chicago is 1MB, where the DirectRoute (& city select) are over 10MB in size). The new 60CS is actually quite apealing to me and has many great features. Unfortunately I travel A LOT and need the ability to have lots of maps pre-loaded. My 128MB card was just barely big enough with the old Mapsend software, but this new DirectRoute software creates much bigger maps and my card is now too small One other note - the Meridian/Sportrak series is really meant to compete against the Etrex & 76 type GPSr. By adding any autorouting capabilities to the Magellans - they have done a GREAT HUGE MONSTER feature enhancement. We didn't by auto-routing GPS units - but all of a sudden we get a new better mapping product with autorouting thrown in for very little $$$ ($99 upgrade). Way cool. It was interesting that Garmin announce this new series of GPS just as the DirectRoute was coming out. Killer timing on Garmin's part. I love competition and I hope Magellan and Garmin keep trying to one-up each other, creating much more choice for us!

The directroute software is very cool. Below is my post from the Magellan Meridian users group on Yahoo. Images I refer to are over at that sight. ========================================== From: skramblr [skramblr@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 10:25 PM To: Magellan_Meridian@yahoogroups.com Subject: Magellan Meridian Re: Direct Route Notes Two more notes: 1) I forgot to mention the 44MB map file took 4 minutes to generate and save to my HD. (It took longer for me to copy it over the the SD card via the card reader). 2) I just noticed a Canada Maps Update CD was included. I installed the update, but didn't notice what it updated. -Skramblr --- In Magellan_Meridian@yahoogroups.com, "Skramblr" <skramblr@c...> wrote: Surprise! My DirectRoute software showed up on my doorstep today. Immediately put it into service, as I had to take my son to get a haircut. Here are some observations. First I created a detailed map. All of Oregon, Washington and Vancouver area of Canada. This was my basic detailed map in Mapsend (~31MB). In DirectRoute the file size increased to 43MB, not too much more. I've posted some images of the maps here (Photos section>Map > Comparisons>Mapsend S&D vs DirectRoute): http://tinyurl.com/wqvf 2 photos - Where I ride ATVs in the Tillamook State Forest - Not at detailed. Many forest service roads are gone. I'll need to keep the S&D map on my GPS for off-roading. Other 2 photos - Downtown Portland, OR. You'll notice mostly no changes to the downtown grid, but there is much better highway on/off ramp detail. Divided highways (ones with large medians in the middle) are actually shown as two separate roads! This means you are more likely to actually be shown on the highway on the GPS (Highways can be 150 feet wide and S&D shows them> as a single line). Other Map observations - The maps are indeed very up to date. About two blocks away they put in a new road this year. Surprisingly that new road is on DirectRoute and is accurate in it's routing and location. POIs - In addition to actually having things like gas stations, there is a new POI Icon. It's shown as an 'x' (you can see it in the downtown map I posted). I guess they didn't have the appropriate Icons created in the firmware, so they use this to mark shopping centers, parking garages, border crossings and 'Named places'. Named Places - This actually looks like a listing of every town & city. This is good news for folks with the Green's limited basemap, as you can now find all those missing cities!!! It also has names areas that aren't necessarily a city. Route waypoints - This all new Mapsend product still only allows you to generate 30 point routes. Street Route to Manual Route conversion - You can convert your street route to a manual route - then modify like the old routes. This is useful for folks who like to make routes manually or if you want to make routes for a non-supported GPS (like the MeriGreen). Alaska - Has some road detail, but they are not routable. Canada - Has road details, but some areas do not. Some areas are routable, but they don't necessarily follow the roads on the map. See my photo in the photos section (link above). Mexico - Some road detail, but not routable. Maybe they should have called this Mapsend North America with DirectRoutable USA. New Screen - Nav Screen, when a street route is active it display all the turn directions (including distances between turns) Beeping, Beeping, Beeping, Beeping, Beeping,.... Stop already! Audio prompts are good, but can get annoying. While traveling thru the city with lots of turns, the GPS is constantly beeping slow, then beeping fast. Gotta kill those alarms. Also, you can't kill the alarms easily. IE, with the backlight - when the light goes off you simply hit a key and the GPS ignores the command usually executed by the key press and instead turns on the light. With the alarms, you hit a key and the alarm goes off - but the GPS actually executes the button pressed - so you have to hit a button to kill the alarm, then escape or back or whatever to get back to the navigation route. (I think I found a wish list item). A good example of when the beeping will get to you. You travel to your next turn, the GPS starts beeping slow, then fast, and you have to stop for the red light. The GPS is beeping. If you sit there for 2 minutes (long traffic light), the GPS will continue to beep until it registers you've gone through the waypoint. A little annoying.

I don't think what you want, exists. Meridian - OK, many models Maps - OK ext antenna - Only the color has that, and since it just came out I doubt anyone wants to part with it. Electronic GPS? - I think you mean Electronic Compass. But the color doesn't have it. The platinum does, but it doesn't have an external antenna.

Note that almost everyone who I have read about trying to change the basemap on the base Meridian did not work. It is different than the other Meridians and can't be updated in the same manor. Note that you'll also need v3.12 or later if you want 128MB (and larger) SD card support to work correctly. Earlier versions have trouble tranfering data to the larger SD cards via serial connection.

Here's a trick that works in EasyGPS. May work in ExpertGPS too. Open the two LOC files you would like to merge. Open the first one, then the second without closing the first. On the menu bar, select Window>Tile. You'll now see your two open files. Click on a waypoint in the window you want to copy from. Then from the menu bar select Edit>Select All. (this will highlight the whole list). Click on the highlighted list and drag it into the other window. It will copy all those waypoints over to the other LOC file. Hit save and you've now saved the merged set. Taadaa... quote:Originally posted by Markwell: Oooooo. Sneaky little devil, you! I was wondering why I couldn't do something like that. That is a good premium feature. Now, if you could just get ExpertGPS or Panterra to do was GeoBuddy does: merge separate loc files into one. Or here's another feature: just click a "Sync" or something like that. It would take all the waypoints from the GPS and from the current loc file, merge them into one and delete oldest version of duplicates (either dup names or dup coordinates) and load the resulting file up to the GPS. THAT I would pay good money for. http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/marklent60544/myhomepage/Geocaching/markwellcachemain.htm http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chicago_geocachers [This message was edited by Markwell on June 04, 2002 at 01:34 PM.]