Garmin Etrex Vista C

[+Gonzo-YT]

I just got my Garmin Etrex Vista C this weekend. All I can say is, WOW! This thing is massively, jaw-droppingly good. I was astounded that any piece of technology can be designed so well and work so smoothly.

 

Everything about this GPS is right. It's totally intuitive to use -- it takes less than an hour of playing with it to be totally comfortably with the user interface. The screen is great under any conditions. This thing is rugged -- no worries about dragging it around in the bush. I always get 8 satellites, and the compass and altimiter work well. Everything is fast -- no delays or lags at all.

 

The Garmin Canada Topo maps are great, and way more useful than scanned map products. Vector-based maps are the way to go, way more acurate than bitmapped information and infintely more powerful and zoomable. With 24 MB in this thing, I can hold more map data than a 256 MB card in my Palm. It can even do street routing from the top maps.

 

I could go on and on. I constantly discover things that are just amazingly well-designed and useful. After experiencing so may annoyances and dissapointments with gadgets, it is so great to see one that just does what you want it to do, and even things that you didn't know that you wanted it to do, and does them well.

 

I took it out and did a difficult 19km summit route, with a lot of tough bushwhacking and dense cover. The GPS didn't even break a sweat (although I sure did). It handled everything I threw at it -- map navigation, calculating distances, recording tracks.

 

I had previously been using my Palm Tungsten T-2 with a Bluetooth GPS. I'll leave the BT GPS in the car from now on. The palm can still come in the field. I use it for a lot of other things like storing cache pages, fishing and hunting information, etc.

[+shia]

Hi,

 

I'm strongly interested in the new Vista C as it came out in Germany only a few days ago.

I own the old b/w Vista which seems to be dying: I have lot's of trouble and annoying effects on my display.

It seems I used dthe device to often on my bycicle

 

In the german speaking forum we discussed several "enhancement" that we are not really satsfied with:

* It seems that you can no longer use routing functionality of the MetroGuide SW. i.e. planning your route on the PC and then transfer it to the Vista C. Only starting and target wp seem to be tranfered.

 

* Garmin do no longer use the serial connector but the fast USB. Great idea: That's what we waited for for years! But, is it now still possible to connect two, call it "passive", USB devices like the Vista C and a PDA via a cable connection without a PC between them?

Does anyone have experiences or an answer to this questions?

[+StormCrow42]

In the german speaking forum we discussed several "enhancement" that we are not really satsfied with:

* It seems that you can no longer use routing functionality of the MetroGuide SW. i.e. planning your route on the PC and then transfer it to the Vista C. Only starting and target wp seem to be tranfered.

 

The Vista C is similar to Garmin's other new autorouting GPS units, you need CitySelect to provide the map routing details (your GPS will then generate street-level routes on the fly).

 

* Garmin do no longer use the serial connector but the fast USB. Great idea: That's what we waited for for years! But, is it now still possible to connect two, call it "passive", USB devices like the Vista C and a PDA via a cable connection without a PC between them?

 

I'm not certain on this one. With the GPSMap 60C and 76C, a USB cable is included but you can still buy the serial cable. I didn't see a mention of a serial cable on the accessories list of the Vista C (and the DC power adapter had a different part number and no picture to compare). It generally isn't possible to connect a PDA and GPS through USB.

[+shia]

Well, know that the MetroGuides do not provide autorouting on the fly, but I hoped that it might still be possible to calculate a route with the MapSource application and then transfer it to the GPSr. Otherwise the MetroGuide maps are more or less useless, because I need the CitySelect.

But if I need new map software when buying a new device this is a clear argument AGAINST the Vista C, even against Garmin in general.

 

It wouldn't make sense to supply such a small device with two connectors that have the same sense: data transfer. So, my question is: Do two devices with a "passive" USB-connector comunicate? Or do you need a PC to transfer data from GPSr to PDA and/or back to the GPSr?

 

With older devices it was possible to establish such a connection. Is it still possible or do we have to wait for the first GPS device with bluetooth? In German we would call that a "Verschlimmbesserung" ("malenhancement" ? )