Convince me to buy a PN-40, or wait for the next iteration

[+The Yinnies]

Cool! Thanks to the recent buyers for chiming in. Hopefully my unit comes out of the box ready to rock.

It does, my Wife was on a roll with hers today.

[+TotemLake]

Anecdotal evidence for both sides, but I've read many posts here on Groundspeak and reviews elsewhere that state problems with the PN-40. Obviously, more people are going to speak out against defects than working units, but it's hard to ignore given the number of complaints.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but truth be told, there was a very high level of issues with the Garmin 60 series when it first came out. Later on, the Colorado and the Oregon. The DeLorme is not standing outside alone in this.

[+Team CowboyPapa]

 

1 - Not typical of a properly manufactured PN-40 unit, but the defect rate on the PN-40 is incredibly high compared to other consumer electronics devices.

 

 

Yes, I undersatnd the intent of this claim.

However, any identification regarding the other consumer electronics devices?

For example:

1. Sony Walkman

2. HP-45C calculator

3. Other

4. All of the above

5. None of the above

 

With quantitative results for the failure rates of the other consumer devices, of course.

MTBF data will suffice, I hope.

 

 

1 - .....The problems are described as a "small percentage of customers" but the defect rate is statistically significant and far higher than acceptable.

 

Of course, and statistically significant as defined here as more than thirty failures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size

 

Again, speaking quantitatively (2 decimal precision should be sufficient), if we have data for the 30 failures and the failure rate is 10%, then the total number having been tested was then 300.

And the link to the PDF of the test report from which testing agency will be posted below?

Edited June 20, 2009 by Team CowboyPapa

[+embra]

I'm late to the game (was moving households this week), but I think you'll end up happy. My standard for a company is not that they are necessarily perfect out of the gate, but that if/when something wrong is brought to their attention, that they make it right. DeLorme does pretty well in this regard.

 

I think a question you asked about XMap wasn't explicitly answered--though maybe I overlooked it. At any rate, DeLorme has seemed to offer the half-price deal on XMap Pro for PN owners for a good while now. While there's no guarantee that they will continue to do so indefinitely into the future, it appears that it is and will continue to be their policy for the time being. You should be able to take advantage of that offer at any time...no 30 day window.

 

Also--and this is purely my speculation--if DeLorme becomes aware of consistent QC issues, I would expect them to make adjustments in their manufacturing process. They don't talk about that stuff, but I would suppose such changes to constitute hardware changes.

[+Searching_ut]

 

Seraching_ut, this is just a hip shot from a GIS techy, so please don't think I'm trying to make a bold statement. It just looks to me like that map you posted isn't the problem. I suspect the maps are just fine and properly referenced, but rather you've got a reall crapper of a unit on your hands that's recording bogus tracks. The tracks are being laid down as they should, but rather the values being recorded are what sucks. Just a theory based on what I see everyday at work.

 

 

The problem is with the maps, not the GPS track, if I download aerial photos, it becomes quite obvious. For the areas I uploaded, aerial photos aren’t available with Delormes TOPO, but I can post maps from other areas where I can download them, or transfer the track data to a different program for comparison is you would find it significantly of interest.

 

If you use GIS systems, you’re probably familiar with “Tiger Maps”, which is a census bureau street mapping database that is very prone to positional errors in many parts of the country, especially in rural areas. If you look at older street mapping programs such as garmins Roads and Rec, or some of the older Magellan stuff like their old topo, where they used Tiger map data, you see the same positional offset. For instance, north of where I live the streets are offset from around 150 feet to 300 feet on the north south axis. It will often change dramatically as you travel though, sometimes being spot on, sometimes hundreds and even thousands of feet off. In fact, is you pull up Ketchikan Alaska on google maps, and do the photo/street map overlay, you’ll see what I mean. Google uses Tele Atlas for street data, which resorts to Tiger map data in many areas like this. They also used Tiger Map data in my local area until just recently, which is why I use Garmin Street navigators instead of Tom Tom in my vehicle. When the data is that far off, it’s of no use for navigating with a GPS. As someone who likes to get out and explore, I’ve come to notice a lot of problems with the different mapping products available. We’ve come a long way since the hand drawn treasure maps of old, but there is still a lot of room left for improvement.

 

I’m not sure where the POI data Delorme uses is coming from. It appears to same public domain data that Expert GPS used to access many years ago. I’ve found it to contain a lot of errors compared to what you find in the Garmin POI database, but haven’t looked at that to any great detail. I’ve just found it to have so many errors for the areas I’ve tried to navigate that I don’t even use it.

 

Regarding the terrain errors, it appears to be based on a 30m DEM in some areas, maybe even less detailed in others. Stream, lake data and similar appear to be overlaid from one of the old 1:100k digital feature conversions. That’s why the misplaced bodies of water, mountain peaks etc., and other errors like contour lines running through lakes, streams and rivers running upstream etc.

 

Anyway, the mapping software leaves a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, you don’t really have any good options with the PN-40, it TOPO doesn't work good in your area. It’s difficult, if not impossible to even route plan on other software that may be better for the area, then upload routes or more detailed tracks to the PN-40 like I often do with other units.

 

Finally, Lee, sorry about the large image. Brain fart amplified because I was using my desktop instead of laptop. It was just a crop of a screen capture. I reduced the original down or PBase, but it's still showing large here. Maybe a cache that has to clear or something.

[+Searching_ut]

As a response to many posts:

 

Wow, hope I didn’t hurt anyones feelers here. I wasn’t trying to call anyone a liar, but I am trying to point out that the Fan-Boy thing Is maybe a little misleading when it comes to this particular type of GPS unit.

When talking reception. If you say you never loose a lock, have you ever used anything else, or done a side by side. The PN-40 works about the same as every other modern handheld, unit out there. It loves flat open terrain, does okay in tree cover, but doesn’t like tight areas where the terrain closes in. It will often lock in quite quickly, but that comes at a price of being somewhat off in it’s position reporting on occasion, sliding into fix as I used to call it years ago. Example here:

 

If you’re not experiencing reception issues with a PN-40, I doubt you will with and etrex HCX, 60, Magellan, or even a forerunner GPS unit. If you’re having trouble with one of those units, I doubt you’ll see noticeable improvement switching to a PN-40.

 

The battery thing again can be misleading. Most modern units are quite predictable when it comes to battery life, with the only real variables being backlight usage, or turning sensors on or off. The PN-40 however, can vary significantly in the field, especially if it’s having reception issues. With the same type battery, 3 green bars for instance may mean less than an hour to shutdown, whereas a couple yellow bars might mean 3 more hours or life remaining if in flat open terrain. My own history is that if wandering around on foot for a days adventure, I’ll probably need three sets of batteries. (I generally use the slow discharge NiMh types, Rayovac, Duracell, or Enlope, but have other types as well, all charged and maintained on high end battery conditioning equipment)

 

Again, when it comes to downloadable maps, information given out by users of this unit can be and often is somewhat misleading. When you say you can download aerial photo maps for instance, most people are probably going to visualize downloading the same thing you get on Google maps. In reality, they are less detailed, most likely in part due to high data compression levels. They are also older than what a google user might expect, and don’t cover as many areas. In addition, the unit doesn’t communicate or play well with other vendors software, so playing with and sharing data with different programs can be difficult. Someone wanting to use the PN-40 for something like geo-tagging photos for instance might find this shortcoming troublesome.

[+Searching_ut]

Deleted, Duplicate post...

Edited June 21, 2009 by Searching_ut

[+GadgetMonster]

I have a immaculate used one for sale in the forsale forum if you want one with all the goodies.

[+user13371]

The battery thing again can be misleading.

Another variable in "the battery thing" is that the PN-40 does drain the battery a little bit even when the device is off. And before anyone argues with me on that, check page 2 of the PN-40 manual

 

So unless your timing scenario is "Insert new batteries, turn the PN-40, leave it on until they're flat" -- you'll never get consistent results.

Edited June 21, 2009 by lee_rimar

[+Searching_ut]

The battery thing again can be misleading.

Another variable in "the battery thing" is that the PN-40 does drain the battery a little bit even when the device is off. And before anyone argues with me on that, check page 2 of the PN-40 manual

 

So unless your timing scenario is "Insert new batteries, turn the PN-40, leave it on until they're flat" -- you'll never get consistent results.

 

The battery discharge while turned off is something that I was already aware of, having noticed significant discharge in as little as a week of the unit sitting on the shelf, and maybe as much as half my batteries drawn down with a couple weeks on non use. That qwirk however isn't part of the variability I was noticing. I haven't played with mine enough to figure it out yet, but it seems to be most significant in areas where reception is tough and the unit is struggling to maintain a lock, also, every time I've had the extra fast discharge times I've also had the unit routing off road, so I don't know if maybe that ties in or not. Does type of map used factor in, or other stuff like that I wouldn't even venture a guess yet at this point. I just know mine isn't very predictable yet.

[+Rockin Roddy]

Here's a picture of KAboom while walking to the cache "Hardy Har Har".

 

 

Near "Hardy Har Har"...never lost signal the whole 2 mile trek in this deep wooded and high terrain area. The hills behind me (out of pcture) are steep and heavily wooded. We found the cache without a problem since the PN-40 put us right on top of it!

 

 

While this picture doesn't show the terrain very well, you'd have thought we were in Yellowstone or maybe waaay up in Canada. The stream is about 15' or so below this bridge, the trail dropped a good deal to go to this bridge built by a BS troop! High "canyon-like' walls are on either side of this stream!

 

 

View of the stream from the bridge.

 

 

As you can see, the dense coverage and terrain is pretty rugged, never noticed a signal loss or a problem being led to the cache! One last picture, this one is from the kayak cache which we attempted twice with a DNF each time due to a missing stage and well, we don't know about the final since we never did locate it. We were put right where the final was described to be though!

 

Edited June 22, 2009 by Rockin Roddy

[+curt&jen]

Searching_ut, thanks for the elaboration. I didn't notice (or just forgot) that the TOPO maps use TIGER data, which explains a lot. I just took it for granted that since XMap can aid in georeferencing additional user-acquired imagery that perhaps adding vector data to the unit was also possible....yes? If so that'll be one of the first things I add to my PN-40 - reliable roads data. I am a little suprised at the low-res topo data as well, but then again, maybe it's done with good reason so as not to overwhelm the processor.

 

One the things I'm most looking forward to is testing the performance limits of this unit with additional data. Hopefully it can handle vecotr and raster data with higher resolution than what TOPO offers.