+whereto Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 (edited) I am not having any joy with my new etrex 20. The first thing I did was to upgrade to 2.40 o prevent the problems people where having downloading queries. I was able to download fine but it lost the 900 or so caches I had stored in it twice. I have not been happy with the accuracy and when you got near GZ and walk slowly to zero in it locks on a distance and stays there randomly pointing the compass which makes it impossible to continue. I have a very old etrex yellow and it never has done that and actually has been much more responsive in side by side comparison. I could also not get to the hints, past logs, or other info. When I tried to log the cache as found I would get to the "view geocache" screen and when I tried to open that it just jumps back to the main menu. If you are trying to do paperless caching it is useless to not be able to mark them as found because the Gps will try and take you back to that cache until you are more than half way to the next. Twice now I've ended up just leaving the 20 in the vehicle and going with the old Etrex yellow. Fortunately I had downloaded the caches and printed out the GSAK pages. I now have reloaded 2.40 to see if that helps and if it doesn't Garmin can have it back. I'm fed up with it. Edited December 12, 2011 by whereto Quote Link to comment
yogazoo Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Ahh, the age-old Garmin handheld business model of releasing a unit before testing the firmware and then taking a year after the unit's been released to refine it. I do have to say I've been just as frustrated with my Montana, but everytime I get frustrated to the point of wanting to list my unit on eBay and go with a different company, Garmin releases a new firmware version that fixes a bunch of stuff. All I can say is that it gets better, just hang in there. You should email the firmware team and state your problems clearly and without anger. They do respond pretty well to folks reporting problems. They have to, apparently we're the only folks who test the firmware. Being an early adopter means you're a volunteer software/firmware tester. Quote Link to comment
+user13371 Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 (edited) Ahh, the age-old Garmin handheld business model of releasing a unit before testing the firmware and then taking a year after the unit's been released to refine it... If that was originally Garmin's idea, the patent trolls need to get busy. Version 1.0 is the new 0.9 -- Get used to it! Edited December 13, 2011 by Portland Cyclist Quote Link to comment
+chris-66 Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Hi, my 20 also had some issues which I could solve by doing a hard reset. Unfortunately it didn't helped on the sticky issue. Chris Quote Link to comment
+whereto Posted December 12, 2011 Author Share Posted December 12, 2011 (edited) Hi, my 20 also had some issues which I could solve by doing a hard reset. Unfortunately it didn't helped on the sticky issue. Chris How do you do a hard reset. I was going to do that and start all over but I just overwrote the existing 2.40 that I had installed originally. I don't have much info to lose by doing a reset. BTW is there a better owners manual than the one that installs it seems to be pretty basic Edited December 12, 2011 by whereto Quote Link to comment
yogazoo Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Ahh, the age-old Garmin handheld business model of releasing a unit before testing the firmware and then taking a year after the unit's been released to refine it... If that was opriginally Garmin's idea, the patent trolls need to get busy. Version 1.0 is the new 0.9 -- Get used to it! Good article. For clarity I didn't say it was Garmins idea, I said it's their business model. Apparently it's also everyone elses. Quote Link to comment
+whereto Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 You can download a manual from Garmins website. I have that one and it seems pretty basic. For example I would like a better explanation of GPS vs GPS/GLONASS is there any advantage to either? Why do I have an option to turn WAAS off? I thought it was good thing is there a time when I should turn it off. As well I don't understand the USB Mode of either Mass storage or Garmin storage. Why would I need to choose. These things I don't understand and would like to know. After I did the reload of the 2.40 it seems to be working better. I can get to the page with the geocache information and can now mark a geocache as found. Time will tell. If someone can tell me how to do a hard restart I will try that once if it gives me any more problems after that Garmin can deal with it. I am now past the point of wondering if it's me not doing something right or the GPS acting up. I know it has been the GPS acting up Quote Link to comment
+GeoTrekker26 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 You can download a manual from Garmins website. I have that one and it seems pretty basic. For example I would like a better explanation of GPS vs GPS/GLONASS is there any advantage to either? Why do I have an option to turn WAAS off? I thought it was good thing is there a time when I should turn it off. As well I don't understand the USB Mode of either Mass storage or Garmin storage. Why would I need to choose. These things I don't understand and would like to know. After I did the reload of the 2.40 it seems to be working better. I can get to the page with the geocache information and can now mark a geocache as found. Time will tell. If someone can tell me how to do a hard restart I will try that once if it gives me any more problems after that Garmin can deal with it. I am now past the point of wondering if it's me not doing something right or the GPS acting up. I know it has been the GPS acting up I fully agree the Garmin manual is terrible. They often tell you what something is, but not what it means nor how to use it. I go to there web site looking for forums and only find forums for developers, none for users. (Unless they are well hidden.) It's almost if the manual was an after thought that they threw together so they would have something to ship with the product. To answer your question about WAAS: Leaving WAAS on is a load on the unit and will shorten battery life. That might not be an issue for you as the 20 gets excellent mileage out of its batteries. With my OLD eTrex, WAAS improved accuracy. With the 20 I have not noticed any significant improvement with WAAS so I leave it off. (I am using the GPS+GLONASS sats.) 2.40 fixed major issues with GPX files so your problems with the View Geocache page could easily be related to that. You may have had a bad install the first time you tried it. I have no idea what Garmin storage is and don't need it since mass storage mode seems to work well. However it would be nice if these things were explained in the docs. Sigh... Quote Link to comment
+chris-66 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 How do you do a hard reset. For a hard/master reset you press and hold 3 keys during startup: Menu, Enter(joystick) and power. Then a message appears : Are you sure to erase all data. Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.