Colorado future

[+FiveforFighting]

Does anyone know if the Colorado is going to be phased out with release of the Oregon??

[+CelticDave]

Not by Garmin, just by those who have owned 1...2...3...or 4 of them. I am so sorry but I could not resist Seriously that is a good question for Garmin customer support.

[+RonFisk]

Not by Garmin, just by those who have owned 1...2...3...or 4 of them. I am so sorry but I could not resist Seriously that is a good question for Garmin customer support.

I've owned five. Don't forget me.....

[+Tequila]

I saw the light after 3.

 

I wonder what the record is.

[MtnHermit]

I've owned five. Don't forget me.....

If you don't mind, what could have been so wrong for you to cycle so many? Do you still have the 5th? If so, congratulations!!!

 

I classic case of a well conceived product turned loose on the market before sufficient testing and tuning. Garmin has paid quite a price. Big retailers like REI no longer carry it, and each of those returns are enormously expensive.

 

I have a CO 300, and except that the beeper is almost inaudible, I've been impressed.

 

BTW, This is a Hoot!!!

When told the reason for daylight saving time the old Indian said...

'Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top

of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.'

[ZeMartelo]

I am on my first and so far it is working as it should.

Sure there are a few things I would like for it to do differently but isnt that the same for any electronics?

[robertlipe]

CO is kind of a frustrating page in Garmin history.

 

The market had repeatedly seen about a two year life cycle on the Garmin products, during which the first year would see active addressing of the complaints and problems on the products.

 

CO was announced/shipped about Jan of last year. Those of us that bought into the line hoping that the long list of defects/wishes in the product line but have seen CO ignored while OR, released just a few months later, have been updated are annoyed.

[+Tequila]

I've owned five. Don't forget me.....

If you don't mind, what could have been so wrong for you to cycle so many? Do you still have the 5th? If so, congratulations!!!

 

I classic case of a well conceived product turned loose on the market before sufficient testing and tuning. Garmin has paid quite a price. Big retailers like REI no longer carry it, and each of those returns are enormously expensive.

 

I have a CO 300, and except that the beeper is almost inaudible, I've been impressed.

 

BTW, This is a Hoot!!!

When told the reason for daylight saving time the old Indian said...

'Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top

of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.'

 

Unit 1 - Leaked water into the battery compartment (Garmin is still trying to resolve this issue). Huge accuracy problems. In one case we were standing with the cache in our hands. My 60 said 3 meters, my CO said 248 meters and my friends CO said 140 meters. Eventually her CO settled down. Mine required a power cycle. This problem has since been fixed with firmware.

 

Unit 2 - Leaked. Any unit with a gap between the back cover and the base is susceptible. After running the batteries dead, it would not restart. Came up with "system software missing". Garmin repair center could not fix it and replaced it after I waited 5 weeks.

 

Unit 3 - Leaked. Didn't have it long enough to test for any other problems. By this time, Garmin had threw in the towel and gave me an OR

 

The OR is so much easier to use. I can input coordinates (all on a single touchscreen) in 1/10th the time of a CO.

 

That's my story. Who's next?

[+Timpat]

CO is kind of a frustrating page in Garmin history.

 

The market had repeatedly seen about a two year life cycle on the Garmin products, during which the first year would see active addressing of the complaints and problems on the products.

 

CO was announced/shipped about Jan of last year. Those of us that bought into the line hoping that the long list of defects/wishes in the product line but have seen CO ignored while OR, released just a few months later, have been updated are annoyed.

Here Here! Precisely my thoughts and feelings! I'm on my 2nd CO 300 and have been lucky that it performs perfectly and I truly love it. My repeated requests via email, tech support forms, and phone calls for added features had have appeared on the OR have gone unheeded. I continue to piss in the wind asking, but I'm losing faith.

[+Red90]

Really, most real "bugs" are gone.

 

"Most" of the people that returned units in the past was due to software, not hardware. The Oregon came out with less bugs as the timing was about the time that the main bugs were out of the Colorado.

 

The biggest gripe is that they are adding features to the Oregon and not to the Colorado.

 

I doubt they will drop it. They are different, for different needs. I could never use a unit without an external antenna port (for instance) as the reception when mapping in a vehicle is not adequate.

[qwer993]

They are different, for different needs.

 

Yes... all day I have been out cross country skiing with my Colorado (using external power supply). Temperature -20C/-4F, I wear big mittens, still able to control the Colorado using the rocknroller and the centre button. I doubt it is possible to effectivly control the Oregon/touch screen wearing stuff like that.

[+SALUKIS97]

1 Colorado - no problems.

 

I'm sure the Oregon is a great unit, and I may even get one some day. But for now, I am completely satisfied with my colorado.

[robertlipe]

As a software guy myself, I know well that "bugs" and "feature updates" are different. CO doesn't crash much any more and the collected positions are not significant fractions of a mile off these days, so it's not terrible. But the user interface remains a train wreck and in some ways, the product is a step backward from the 60CSx, so I'm not feeling unconditional love for it.

 

I really miss the dated infinite track storage, and the ability to set thresholds for turning the compass off and on, and find the boot times maddening (and the face that you have to boot twice to load waypoints and then see them) as some examples. That said, the convenience of carrying one device for caching instead of two trumps the annoyances for me.

 

Having a suspicion that the CO and the OR came from the same source code, at least at some point, it's annoying to see the functional gap between the two units keep growing.

 

Garmin keeps building 60% of the perfect GPS, it's just a different 60% on each model. :-)

[MtnHermit]

But the user interface remains a train wreck

How so? If you combine Profiles with the dual paging option of the roll (bi-directional) or forward only via the right button, like my eTrex, seems like a fine UI.

 

I really miss the dated infinite track storage

You mean the YYMMDD onto the SD card. Have to agree.

 

Garmin keeps building 60% of the perfect GPS, it's just a different 60% on each model. :-)

Yep!!!

[+Tequila]

But the user interface remains a train wreck

How so? If you combine Profiles with the dual paging option of the roll (bi-directional) or forward only via the right button, like my eTrex, seems like a fine UI.

 

I really miss the dated infinite track storage

You mean the YYMMDD onto the SD card. Have to agree.

 

Garmin keeps building 60% of the perfect GPS, it's just a different 60% on each model. :-)

Yep!!!

 

Try entering a whole series of coordinates out in the field. The OR can do it in 1/10th of the time of the CO. The entire 10 digits are on a single touchpad. No rotating back and forth and clicking. Just like using a calculator. The same goes for changing the name of a waypoint.

 

I also find menu managment so much easier on the OR.

[MtnHermit]

Try entering a whole series of coordinates out in the field. The OR can do it in 1/10th of the time of the CO. The entire 10 digits are on a single touchpad. No rotating back and forth and clicking. Just like using a calculator. The same goes for changing the name of a waypoint.

 

I also find menu managment so much easier on the OR.

Never enter coordinates in the field, no need to. I get all the position context I need from the 24K Topos.

 

No question a touchscreen is vastly superior for alpha-numeric entry. I wasn't willing to pay an additional $200 for the few times I need to edit a waypoint.

 

Try to do a screenshot on an OR or read through 2 resistive touch layers in sunlight w/o back light. Robert said it best, each is 60% perfect.

[+Tequila]

Try entering a whole series of coordinates out in the field. The OR can do it in 1/10th of the time of the CO. The entire 10 digits are on a single touchpad. No rotating back and forth and clicking. Just like using a calculator. The same goes for changing the name of a waypoint.

 

I also find menu managment so much easier on the OR.

Never enter coordinates in the field, no need to. I get all the position context I need from the 24K Topos.

 

No question a touchscreen is vastly superior for alpha-numeric entry. I wasn't willing to pay an additional $200 for the few times I need to edit a waypoint.

 

Try to do a screenshot on an OR or read through 2 resistive touch layers in sunlight w/o back light. Robert said it best, each is 60% perfect.

 

No need to???? How do you do multi caches where each stage gives you the next stage's coordinates?

 

I didn't pay $200 extra for my OR. Garmin gave it to me in exchange for a useless CO.

[MtnHermit]

No need to???? How do you do multi caches where each stage gives you the next stage's coordinates?

I'm a bushwacker, hiker, backpacker; not a "hide-n-seeker".

[ZeMartelo]

I dont find the input method of the Colorado to be that bad. Time consuming? Yes but not awful.

Would have preferred the method used by the 60csx. Actually the roller button is a button that Garmin could get away without. The cursor keys with the two soft buttons are more than enough to cover everything.

 

Myself when using the unit I find myself changing between screens (map/compass/sat) so I wish there was a way to go back and forth the pages without going thu Shortcut or the useless page method.

[MtnHermit]

Myself when using the unit I find myself changing between screens (map/compass/sat) so I wish there was a way to go back and forth the pages without going thu Shortcut or the useless page method.

If you create a profile of only map/compass/sat, then the "useless" page method is very fast. After all, your 60CSx only had the "useless" page method and I've never heard anything but raves about it.