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Phew !!! To get a manually created route off of a 550 couldn't you just open a new mapsource window then drag the gpx file for the new route from the \garmin\gpx folder into the mapsource window ? Gary

You what ????? I don't use routes all the time but I change waypoints every few days, and for the rallies I end up with a honking great gdb file that has about 200 waypoints and 30-40 routes - if I was putting that on a 550 would I need to use a seperate gpx file for every route plus one for the waypoints ? That would suck !!! Gary

Unfortunately not :-( Having swapped emails with Garmin support, it's sadly become clear that the only way to get the routes out of the internal database on an x00 series Oregon is to delete them one by one from the route planner menu, or to nuke the entire internal database by doing a full system reset. The camera could be handy, the 3 axis compass could be handy, the extra capacity for routes and waypoints and caches could be handy, and being able to delete routes easily would be handy, but the price tag of a 550 needs more than "could be handy" to get me thinking seriously about upgrading from the 300. Gary Gary

Caches are handled by the OR the same way as POI's - totally different to waypoints. Fire up the Oregon in mass storage mode and look in the \garmin\gpx folder, you'll find the caches stored in gpx files there. Delete the gpx files in that folder and restart, no more caches ... If only routes were that simple - but even if you load them from gpx files they get copied to the internal database and need to be deleted from there as well as killing the gpx files :-( Gary

I've got ~30 saved routes (routes, not tracks) in my OR300 from my last long trip away following a car rally, now I've got another one coming up and I needed to clear those routes out to load in some new ones. I ended up deleting them one at a time because I couldn't find any way to delete all the routes - I can get rid of all the waypoints, the caches, the tracks, the custom POIs, etc, but I'm blowed if I can see a way to get rid of all the saved routes. I even tried a master reset which cleared out all my user data and (finally) reset the odometer, but it didn't touch the saved routes. Is it really a case of having to delete them one by one ? If so, I'm seriously glad I didn't splash out for a 550 which will store 200 routes ! Thanks Gary

Erk - so many familiar looking changes ! Can anyone spot if anything has changed from b3.01 ? (or did Garmin just wait a couple of weeks to see how 3.01 went down then re-tag it 3.10 and release it ? ) Gary

Google. Google, google, google, google, more google, yet more google, even more google, still more google, and eventually you'll have read enough reviews and opinions that when you read one talking about whether the buttons are in the right place you'll know that most people think they're fine, or they should be inside out, or whatever ... I spent about 2 months trawling the googlesphere before I took the plunge and bought my Oregon. By the end of it I might not be able to remember where I'd read something but by hokey I could tell you both sides of the arguements about the screen / battery life / accuracy / etc etc, and which side most people were coming down on ... Gary

Or, for something that's a bit easier to spell, see "Nuvi". Gary

I think it has to be recalibrated every time you power it off. You don't actually walk in a circle Jim, you hold the OR flat then turn round slowly twice in one spot. If you just held the unit and turned it you'd be blocking the satellites that were behind you. Gary

double posted. Blast ...

That's normal for my OR300. I've occasionally seen it down to 3-4 feet reported accuracy but not very often. If you need consistently better accuracy than 7' are you sure a consumer handheld is what you should be using ? 7 feet is plenty close enough for caching, the cache location is only as accurate as the owner's gps was at the time they placed it and it will probably have moved a couple of feet since then with all the finds and rehides. To me hunting for the cache is half the fun, so a small bit of mystery isn't a problem. I guess for people with other caching styles being led to the exact spot first time every time could be important. Gary

Have a look at reply #38 in this thread. To save you actually looking , it says Cheers Gary

I know, and that worries me - I really don't want to upgrade my 300 yet, but if the 500 is significantly brighter ..... a properly bright screen is undeniably better than a perfectly usable one ... Gary

Your reasoning appears to be that the opinions of people who don't own Oregons are not valid. People who don't own Oregons have perfectly valid opinions about the Oregon. It just so happens that their opinions are consistently contrary to the opinions of people who do own Oregons. That is my reasoning, and that is all that I said. Gary

In that case it's not exactly like the other Garmins - battery saver on the Oregons turns the screen off completely while the backlight is off. Gary

No, once the manual is done that's pretty well it. Surely you're not suggesting that the manual was ever anything more than an enlarged quickstart guide ? Gary

You're absolutely right Ivor. Everybody should email the beta team at once and demand that they disable the Sight'n'Go feature in the Oregon firmware, and make it so that it can only be re-enabled by a garmin technician after the Oregon has been moved into a new case that does have the marks. What on earth would happen if everybody just went ahead and used the new waypoint projection feature willy nilly without any white marks on their cases ? Anarchy, that's what would happen ! Chaos, plagues of locusts, increased taxes, famine, Yorkshire would secede and become a republic, pestilence, wars, probably even a cholera epidemic. It's not good enough ! Gary ps I loved 2.95, I love 2.96 even more. Just wish the dadgum thing would stop deleting its tracklogs after 20 files !

Yes indeed. I've never had a problem seeing the screen on my 300. One thing that really stood out to me when I was reading up about this issue before I bought my 300 was that people are almost always in one of two groups : Group 1 - People who say it's a problem. These people don't actually own Oregons. They've tried one in a shop, or bought one and turned it on and immediately turned it off again and returned it, or looked at a friend's unit for a minute or so, and that's the entire basis on which they claim it's unreadable. Group 2 - People who say it's not as bright as older low-res units but it's perfectly usable. These people own and use Oregons. You can see this split perfectly in this thread - the only person who said the screen is a problem is lalittle who doesn't own one. The rest of us, who do own them, are pretty well agreed that it could be better but it's certainly not unreadable. Gary

GSAK is highly recommended by almost all of us, and the macros are good if you're not sure what you are doing, but sounds like you are past the point where you'd need the macros. GSAK is still a killer app though Yes you are exactly right - if you use mapsource to load the gpx file you'll end up with waypoints, the way to load caches is to treat the OR as an external hard drive and drop the gpx files into the \garmin\gpx folder. Cheers Gary

How did you upload the PQ to your Oregon ? The way we do it is find the Oregon in My Computer then copy the .gpx file produced by the PQ into the \garmin\gpx folder on the Oregon. When you've finished with those caches you delete the gpx file from the Oregon. That's the only way to get rid of the old caches - putting more GPX files onto the Oregon adds to what's there, it doesn't replace it. Hope that helps Gary

I have a bunch of PQs that between them send me updates for all North Island (New Zealand) caches. The attached files get unzipped into a special folder on my desktop, then every few days I run GSAK and it eats everything in that folder then deletes the files it's finished with. When I want to go somewhere I just apply a new filter on GSAK and export the results as a gpx file onto the Oregon. My database is up to date to within a day or so, I can apply as many filters as I want in one day, and the searching is far more flexible than GC's PQs. Works for me, and for lots of other people - give it a try And yes, update your firmware to 2.95 - there are a couple of issues with it which some people have and some don't, personally I haven't had any since I left the OR outside on the deck for a couple of hours and let it really nail down where it was. 5 metre USB leads are the shizzle Gary

Aah, that'll be an EasyGPS problem then. Can't help you any further, I don't use it myself. Gary

What's the easiest way to get pictures (eg the puzzle for a puzzle cache) from cache records in GSAK into the OR, and is there a way to make them appear in the cache record or do I have to look at them with the picture viewer ? If I have to I can save the pictures one by one from GSAK onto the OR, renaming them as I go with the cache ID, but to do that I have to know they're there and I'd rather not look through a thousand or so caches searching for pictures that need to be copied Thanks Gary

Presume you are using the "send to gps" function on the GC page ? Try this ... Get rid of any existing GC gpx files on the OR then look at a cache on the website. Send it to your OR. You should have just the one gpx file in your \garmin\gpx folder. Scroll down the page on the website til you see the most recent log, then open the gpx file on the OR with notepad and scroll down that too - you should find the logs in there somewhere. They'll be hidden in a bunch of code. If they're not obvious try searching for some text from the latest log. If the logs are present in the gpx file but you can't see them on the OR then it's a setting on the OR, if there are no logs in the gpx file then it's a problem with the PQ or GC website. Good luck ! Gary

Against which, since a week or so ago when I left my Oregon (300 / 2.95) laying out on the deck for two hours to remove any possibility of an incomplete almanac it has behaved perfectly, even among the tall buildings downtown with sat 01 showing up in the list. Gary