No love for the garmin dakota?

[+releasethedogs]

Some what upset that Wherigo is not supported on the dakota series. Is it possible that it could be added later on via firmware updates?

[+sTeamTraen]

Whether or not it can be added in future will depend on /a/ marketing, and /b/ whether or not there's enough space in whatever flavour of flash memory holds the software.

 

I'm guessing that leaving Wherigo out is a marketing decision by Garmin. I don't suppose that the difference in manufacturing cost between the Dakota and the Oregon is more than a couple of bucks; they just want to be able to sell to people who want to spend $200 (ish) and those who want to spend $400. And the cost of pasting the Wherigo software in there would be pretty small (although they apparently managed to introduce new bugs when porting it from the Colorado to the Oregon. )

 

Many years ago, I had a colleague who had worked for Ford. Think of a Ford model like the Focus (US or European) - you can probably get it with four different engines, three levels of trim, MP3 dock or not, etc etc. He told me that the production people had caculated that if they only manufactured the absolute top-of-the-line model, it would cost less to produce than the current bottom-of-the-line model. In other words, where you might now pay between 12,000 and 18,000 from the cheapest to the most expensive, they'd be able to sell you the current top model for 11,500. But they don't because "marketing tells us that people want a choice".