nittek

Well put. I did similar research . When the smoke cleared considrering price, features, etc. the Venture CX was the logical choice. Got a 1GB card for $18 and downloaded City Navigator to the Venture CX at no additonal charge as I already had it on my Streetpilot i3. Garmin customer service talked me through the unlock/downloading phase quickly and effortlessly. This is a wonderful unit and as you mentioned superior customer service is another reason Garmin distances itself from the competition.

In that I already had City Navigator on my Garmin Streetpilot i3 I was able to download City Navigator (Oregon, Washington, and California) to my Venture CX at no charge. City Navigator is a very nice feature to have on the CX.

Did a lot of research, owner opinions included, before deciding on the Sony 34 HE4 Worldwide charger. Works here and oveseas, is a smart charger, remains cool, can charge 4 AA or AAA or a mix of em.. It comes with 4 NIMH 2500s. I like it very much and consider it a bargain on Amazon where I picked it up at 22.95. Probably lower on ebay.

Garmin obviously observes the 150 Rule. This is a guideline that many successful businesses follow. It is based on the premise that the average person has about 150 friends. When a person buys a product or uses a service and they are dissatisfied and the problem is not resolved there is the potential for 150 negative reports to family and firends plus thousands on a forum like this one. On the other hand if the problem is resolved in a positive manner the same potential also exists. We all know businesses that provide fine products but fail miserably in the way they treat customer complaints and concerns. Garmin not only provides a quality product it provides excellent customer relations and service as well. This is the reason the company dominates in market share.

Yes to all questions. The only but is that the maps (at the moment) will not work on the new unit as they need to be unlocked to the Venture Cx's serial number before being put on the card. You should be able to use the second free unlock to unlock the maps to the new unit and then reload the maps. As you advised I did the unlock thing and downloaded the map and everything is cool. Thanks for your help.

I bought a Garmin Streetpilot i3 several months ago. It came with a 128 memory card to which I downloaded the western US states on City Navigator maps that came with the unit. Last week I bought a 1GB micro card so I could download all of the US and Canada to my i3 replacing the 128 card. I am assuming I can now put the 128 card in my Venture CX with no problem Right? Does the original map , America's Marine Point Map, that came with the unit remain in the GPS's memory?

I got my Venture Cx a couple of months ago and am glad I got it. Didn't take long to get aquainted with the Cx and find it pretty easy to use. I think you're going to like this GPS.

Was frustrated trying to connect my laptop to my Venture Cx. Glad I ran across your post. I followed your directions, the problem is solved. What a great help this forum is...Thank you!

I have a Garmin Venture CX. For some reason when I go to the GSAK GPS setup and check the USB box I am not able to connect my laptop to my GPS to download waypoints. Has anyone else run into this problem?

I'm new to geocaching...what is a pocket query?

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your experiences and your your suggestions . This has been very helpful and encouraging.

I am a newbie to geocaching. Became very interested a month or so ago. Got an early model etrex off ebay (with no WAAS) for small investment just to see if this is something I would want to stay with. Even bought Geocaching For Dummies ...I just checked in with myself and find that I still like this pastime an awful lot even though I find myself cacheless after two attempts. The first cache I searched for a good 45 minutes until I lost daylight. Came back the next morning to the same cache sight and spent over an hour searching with no results. I then went to another cache which what I thought should have been a piece of cake only to strike out again and come up with yet another DNF. These are 1/1 caches. I am feeling rather stupid that I have yet to come up with my first find. Has anyone else had the same difficulty till they found their first cache? I read these logs on the geocahcing website and I get a little intimidated with all the success stories. I might add that I did enjoy getting some excersize in searching for the the caches which is one of the things that attracted me to geocaching.