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Did garmin stop developing the montana gps?


freeday

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The updates are becoming less and less frequent. Aside from the random shutdowns that they can't seem to quell (which have been around since the beginning)and the sporadic quirks the Montana is, for the most part, fully functioning. It's been out a year and a half and it seems as though the major improvements, feature additions, and aggressive bug squashing only really occurs during the first year. After that, it seems, development slows down and only major bug fixes are addressed. I share you concern over the bugs that do remain and sincerely hope that the Montana software team can hammer out a few more before hanging it up. The priority seems to be off the Montana though and they have either de-emphasized it or are possibly working on another project (maybe something new for the upcoming gadget shows???)

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The updates are becoming less and less frequent. Aside from the random shutdowns that they can't seem to quell (which have been around since the beginning)and the sporadic quirks the Montana is, for the most part, fully functioning. It's been out a year and a half and it seems as though the major improvements, feature additions, and aggressive bug squashing only really occurs during the first year. After that, it seems, development slows down and only major bug fixes are addressed. I share you concern over the bugs that do remain and sincerely hope that the Montana software team can hammer out a few more before hanging it up. The priority seems to be off the Montana though and they have either de-emphasized it or are possibly working on another project (maybe something new for the upcoming gadget shows???)

 

Much as new toys to look at are nice and all that, it's not a great advert if a new toy comes out while the old one still has outstanding issues that cause such concern.

 

Personally I've been very happy with my Montana. I'm still running firmware 3.6.3 because the new ones seem to have introduced lots of new features but also new bugs that I'd rather not have to tolerate. If I was having ongoing random shutdowns for no apparent reason and the development team had clearly abandoned the project in favour of the latest and greatest I don't know that I'd be in any rush to hand over lots of money for the privilege of beta testing another product.

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Much as new toys to look at are nice and all that, it's not a great advert if a new toy comes out while the old one still has outstanding issues that cause such concern.

 

Nothing "outstanding", at least for me. The random and sporadic shutdowns appear to be processor related as no single action appears to be the culprit. Even so the MontanaBeta folks have been pretty good so far. Time will tell us.

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Ok, so there ARE some annoying quirks like routing on a trail or a road while walking (never works right), and strange dissapearing track segments on the map screen. I have to speculate that the code for the firmware is terribly complex with lots of dependant strings and variables. My experience with the Montana firmware people (who are probably the people for other units as well) is that they are a team of highly capable software engineers. None of us know what that code looks like which makes it easy for some to assert incompetence.

 

Anyway, here's hoping for another update soon. I'm experiencing firmware update withdraw. :blink:

 

Hey, maybe their totally revamping the code to make the entire unit work like never before and it's just taking a while?? Ok, probably not, but here's hoping.

Edited by yogazoo
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The Montana is about 18 month on the market now and some major issues are not solved.

And maybe we had 19 firmware updates, but some of them were corrections on a previously imported error in "new' firmware.

 

Garmin says to be on it, but until they do it's hard to believe.

 

Still we have a so called freeze problem, that's just a freeze of the map while driving or navigating, this error most people

don't even know it exists. With the easy freeze the gps continues after about 1 mile and the gps works besides of the map,

the bad freeze blocks the gps totally and you have to take the battery out and start again.

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Splashy,

 

I forgot about that one. Yes, I've had that bugger too and it's a pain especially in the car because you have to pull over to remove the battery if you wanna be safe about it.

 

The 3D screen is useless too. The blue position arrow is always in the wrong spot for me. I'm always at least a city block off on the map of where I actually am in reality (on the 2D screen it's correct but switching over to the 3D map shows the position error). Strange but I've been reporting it for about a year now with no fixes coming down from Garmin.

 

I'll reiterrate that emailing MontanaBeta@garmin.com bug descriptions is essential to getting them addressed in future firmware releases. Even if you've reported them before. Seems like the "squeeky wheel gets the grease", well, sometimes.

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garmin has a good history of keeping it's products up to date, even on discontinued products. Compare to Magellan, who is horrible at updating stuff and has way too few "insiders" testing stuff out.

 

However, it appears Garmin is starting to get lazy about updating products. Maybe it's due to the fact that Montana's sales have been dismal for Garmin, must like the Geko series was awful for Garmin.

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"Maybe it's due to the fact that Montana's sales have been dismal for Garmin..."

 

How do you know this? Citation? Link to sales data? I'm not doubting you, I'm simply curious to see the sales data.

I would guess that people are not willing to pay $400-$500 for a dedicated GPS machine anymore. Those days are gone.

As good the Montana might be at the end of the day its just a GPS machine and nothing else.

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@zemartello

"I would guess that people are not willing to pay $400-$500 for a dedicated GPS machine anymore. Those days are gone.

As good the Montana might be at the end of the day its just a GPS machine and nothing else. "

 

I agree, with all these free and good working smartphone apps, for most people there's no reason to buy a costly gps.

Edited by splashy
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@zemartello

"I would guess that people are not willing to pay $400-$500 for a dedicated GPS machine anymore. Those days are gone.

As good the Montana might be at the end of the day its just a GPS machine and nothing else. "

 

I agree, with all these free and good working smartphone apps, for most people there's no reason to buy a costly gps.

 

Unless they ever want to venture out of the city, where cell tower coverage is spotty at best. You may want a real GPSr then :)

Edited by Atlas Cached
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2 errors are made when people think about navigation on a smartphone (in this case android)

 

1 the phone works also in bad weather, you only have to shield it from the rain

2 for navigation you don't need a celltower, because many apps let you use the maps offline

 

Battery-life of newer models is so good that most people don't need an extra battery.

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The PND market is probably shrinking but there are still alot of people with enough good reasons to buy and use handhelds. If (and there is still no hard evidence) the Montana sales are indeed dismal then it's obviously due to pricing. Most people who are interested in a GPS for the first time won't spend $500 in something. They'll see an Oregon and decide that for $250 they'll get the most bang for thier buck.

 

I've come to believe that the GPS handheld market simply isn't big enough for the kind of R&D and engineer focus that the smartphones receive. It's why a dedicated GPS lacks alot of the glitz and extraneous functionality of a smartphone. This is also why, I believe, we're not seeing quarterly or even yearly updates to models.

 

All of that said. I still wouldn't trade my Montana for a smart phone or any other model of handheld GPS. The Montana is the most advanced and intuitive handheld GPS on the market today and is why I believe and certainly hope that Garmin's not done with software development/refinement.

 

Does anyone have any links to quarterly or yearly statements that depict handheld GPS markets and whether or not they are shrinking or expanding?

Edited by yogazoo
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...They should have learned their lesson from Magellan with the Explorist XL model, which was also a complete sales disaster because it was over sized.

 

Really? Have you seen the direction smartphones are going? They're not getting smaller nor staying the same, they're getting bigger because that's what people want. Larger screens (within reason) are what people want despite the larger physical size. The assertion that people won't buy a gps unit because it's bigger is complete rubbish.

 

Are there any data supporting your assertions? Or is all of this based on your opinion?

Edited by yogazoo
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I equate GPS’s to vehicles. I have a Subaru Outback I just love to death but about once a week we have to break out the Toyota Sienna minivan because the Subie doesn’t have enough seats. Then every couple months I need to fire up the pickup because I need to haul something. Same thing goes for motorcycles. Some work good on the road and some off road. I even have a couple dual sports but one is too heavy for off road and the other is under powered for on road. The Garmin Montana is for the market of people who refuse to compromise!

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