Explorist GC USB Cover/Battery Indicator/Update Position

[+snowfreak37]

USB Cover

First off I'm happy with the purchase of this GPS'r but I am curious about a few things. The USB port is covered by a rubber tab that pushes into place to make it waterproof. If I push it in all the way its a real pain in the rump to get it back out again. Yes I try to use the side tab to pull it out but its still very difficult. I no longer push it all the way in, just far enough to get it to latch. It will most certainly not keep out water that way but it at least keeps the dirt and dust out of there.

 

Battery Indicator

I have the battery option set correctly to whatever battery type I have in there ie Lithium,Alkaline,rechargable. It consistently shows a full battery until the battery life is almost gone. When the battery icon starts to drop I typically will lose all power within 2 hours. So if I have a set of lithiums in there the icon will show full for 16hours and go from full to no battery life in the last 2 hours. I wish it would read the battery life better than what it does.

 

Update Positon?

Is there a way to get this unit to update the satelites or more importantly your position quicker? It is very accurate but seems to take much longer than my other Magellan units to update my position. I notice this the most when within 100 ft of gz. Sometimes it seems to take forever for the distance to gz to change, with full bars and the W for waas satelite reception. My explorist 500 changes very quickly in comparison to my gc. As a side note I did download and install latest firmware update vs 1.4.

 

I am really enjoying this unit but I wanted to get some feedback from fellow users about the issues I listed. Thanks

[+miniwhip]

Update Positon?

Is there a way to get this unit to update the satelites or more importantly your position quicker? It is very accurate but seems to take much longer than my other Magellan units to update my position. I notice this the most when within 100 ft of gz. Sometimes it seems to take forever for the distance to gz to change, with full bars and the W for waas satelite reception. My explorist 500 changes very quickly in comparison to my gc. As a side note I did download and install latest firmware update vs 1.4.

 

Tur off smart arrow, it helps a lot. Magellan is working on improvements now, not exactly sure as to what.

[+gpsblake]

What helps make it faster. I think they put in too slow of a processor for what the unit was designed for. Magellan's Triton had the same problem. Delorme learned their lesson about putting slow processors into units, Magellan hasn't learn yet.

 

1) Turn off smart arrow

2) Turn off track log - the larger the log, the more lag the unit gets

3) If you can bear it, make the map face NORTH. But a horrible flaw in the GC is they have the map and compass integrated together. So if you have the map facing NORTH, the compass will always have NORTH up and you will be holding the unit upside down and sideways.

4) Turn off auto-zoom, this slows the unit down, especially near ground zero.

 

Magellan hasn't yet figured out that having a beta program for everyone would be beneficial, despite being on it's 4th owner in 6 years. Instead they only allow a few users to beta test, and it clearly shows in the finished product.

[+snowfreak37]

Tur off smart arrow, it helps a lot. Magellan is working on improvements now, not exactly sure as to what.

 

 

I turned the smart arrow off the very first day. Did you read somewhere that Magellan is working on improvements?

Edited September 13, 2010 by snowfreak37

[+snowfreak37]

What helps make it faster. I think they put in too slow of a processor for what the unit was designed for. Magellan's Triton had the same problem. Delorme learned their lesson about putting slow processors into units, Magellan hasn't learn yet.

 

1) Turn off smart arrow

2) Turn off track log - the larger the log, the more lag the unit gets

3) If you can bear it, make the map face NORTH. But a horrible flaw in the GC is they have the map and compass integrated together. So if you have the map facing NORTH, the compass will always have NORTH up and you will be holding the unit upside down and sideways.

4) Turn off auto-zoom, this slows the unit down, especially near ground zero.

 

Magellan hasn't yet figured out that having a beta program for everyone would be beneficial, despite being on it's 4th owner in 6 years. Instead they only allow a few users to beta test, and it clearly shows in the finished product.

 

I have had the smart arrow turned off from day one. I will be turning the track log off for sure to see how that helps out. I can't bear to have the map facing North. In fact until I learned that this feature was an option it almost resulted in the unit getting returned. I disabled auto-zoom from the first day also. So hopefully by turning the track log off it will help, otherwise I already had the other features disabled. Thanks for the help.