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FedEx made it thru the snow to deliver a pair of Garmin Map60Cs to Trudy and the beast.
Wow, this is a great unit! We are going to be busy for a while learning all the bells and whistles. This will give us a little time for the adrenalin levels to return to normal as well.
Can you say “Jealous”?
Please keep us posted on what you find in it’s strengths and weaknesses.Congratulations on your new toys. Hope you get them figured out by tomorrow. Hope you can make the event. We received 2-3 inches of snow, so everything will be so frosted on the Ridge. That’s all the snow we have here tho. so all you’ll need are boots. I’ve got a $1 and Jeff Thorson said he’ll carry the Beast up the hill for that…..hope he shows up. Quite a few trips are waiting for him.
Awesome, I hope you bring it Saturday. We can all oooo and ahhhhh over it
Congrats Trudy and Da Beast! I just decided to skip the compass and altimeter and ordered the 60C from Offroute.com. Everyone seems to be talking about GPScity but Offroute has the same price but I paid extra for shipping. HOWEVER… I see Mr. Irish gets 5% to 20% of the sale, so decided to go that route.
I second Brian. You won’t be admitted to breakfast if you don’t bring those with to show off on Saturday…
We were fortunate enough to see it at the event cache this morning…we are jealous…it looked awesome….congrats T&B…now if you had offered to let Rhonda use it today she just might have pulled you up that hill…hehehehe. Enjoy!!!
Thanks for letting me try it out Mr. Beast. Here are my top 5 reasons I am giving at home on why I need one:
#5 – But dear, you could use a nice color one when we geocache.
#4 – Gee, Ray has one.
#3 – I think I am the only geocacher without color now.
#2 – This will be my last GPS dear.
#1 – I think we could get this new GPS and new livingroom furniture dear (this one will do it I am sure)Come to think of it, maybe you better not bring them on Saturday. You’ll be pretty unpopular with my wife when I start coming up with reasons of my own as to why I need one…
Pouring over the Op manual to dig out every crumb of information to make us experts on the operation of this gem and what should we discover?
A screen image on page 15 names Wellsville, Trudy’s hometown.
Go figure… Was this unit custom built for T&tb?
T & TB,
How about a report on your initial impressions of the new GPS. Since you’ve had a few days to aquaint yourself, I’m wondering what your review of the unit would be.
I got a chance to check it out at Caching through the Snow and it looks mighty impressive.
Some of the features that are immediately impressive are the increased capacities for maps and for user waypoints (56M for maps and 1000 WP); The color graphics are very pleasing; Large numerals are very easy to read; and it seems to hold a satelite lock much better than my Map76. I have also been able to get a satelite lock indoors with it. One feature that surprised me is that the find function allows me to choose a waypoint or geocache (or cities, exits, found caches, POIs, etc) rather than handling them all alike. It includes an alarm clock, Calendar, Calculator and games. There is an improved routine for manual entry of WPs that is a God-send. The back of the unit has the standard 4-pin Garmin connector, USB and external antenna connectors so it is compatable with our other toys.
The display isn’t as vivid as I would like, unless I use the backlight. It is physically the size of the Garmin12 display which is smaller than the 76 and larger than the eTrex. This might make the map76 preferable for Automotive navigation.
Battery life is a very impressive 30 hours, I am told. I havn’t tried to measure it. and there is a battery guage on the top of every page.
I couldn’t justify the 60CS over the 60C, for our use. We are not experts yet (may never be) but this unit seems well worth the price.
~tbAs I turned onto my street while coming home for lunch, the FedEx truck was pulling in front of my house. Talk about timing! I’ll come up with a Garmin V vs GSPMAP60C comparison soon. Many similarities, but Garmin definitely desires the V owner to purchase two units. The 60 and the new replacement for the StreetPilot.
My most important reason for buying it was memory capacity and speed of loading maps. I am not disappointed. Loading nearly 500 waypoints was instantanious and 56 megs of maps covered Wisconsin, most of the UP and most of Chicago. It loaded in around five minutes, give or take some. I was not timing it.
For driving, some method of securing it to be visible while being hands free will have to be devised using the screw hole on the back of it. It does not sit horizontal as does the V but Garmin could have added that feature so it could lay on the dash resting in a bean bag or however. Like I said, they want us to buy two units.
I hope the weather warms a bit this weekend so I can give it a try in the woods. Who knows, maybe it’ll even sniff out that Diamond In The Rough!
Steve,
Congratulations… I think you are going to like the unit. Have you given it a name yet? Howie is taken. We are thinking of calling ours Bonnie and Clyde as Shrek & Fiona are taken also.Were you able to load the data via USB or Serial Port? I loaded Topo through the SP , and it took over an hour to load the same maps you mention. Since the Maps will be stored semi-permanently, this isn’t a problem but I would like to start using the USB for WP downloads. Easy GPS just isn’t working over my USB connection. I am not sure if it is a software issue or my laptop since both gps units are behaving the same.
Ray
I used the USB connected and Mapsource. I just tried EasyGPS and it doesn’t have USB provisions. For the heck of it, I tried Mapsource again and download from the GPS the waypoints, maps and tracks. It was instantaneous. Uploading waypoints are the same. I agree that the maps cover a wide enough area that seldom will I have to change them, but it is good to know that a whole new mapset takes less than five minutes! I did notice that after using the USB cable, my USB connection to my scanner was disabled and I had to reboot the computer to get the scanner to be recognized. Possible a problem with my USB hub.
I drove around a bit to try autorouting and it does compute faster than the V, but I don’t think the screen is as efficient. The best way I can describe it is that the map screen is smaller and the color seems to bloat the features. I think it is better for a passenger to use it as a navigator where the V would fit in my line of sight and the screen was sharper and more informative. It is as if the electronics have advanced but the display has taken a step back.
I did find that I held a good lock while sitting in my recliner. The V would not. So, I expect better performance once the leaves sprout out. I also think the color display might be more readable when in a park where the V has a contrast problem if trying to see the tracks dashes.
So, the way I see it is that it is not a replacment for the car navigation function of the V, though the electronics are better suited. It probably will be a better geocaching handheld with the added bonus of routing you in the cachemobile from hunt to hunt.
For my needs, I think I’ll sell the V and keep an eye open for a good price on a Street Pilot on eBay and use that for car navigation.
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