Ken Heaton, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia wrote:

If you decide Garmin is for you make sure you read the thread on this
newgroup titled "Am I going to hate Garmin more than Micro$oft?"
started by Roger Long.

You know, if I had simply registered the GPS when I bought it just after
Christmas, the Garmin system would have worked fine and I probably would be
singing praises of it now, except for the cost. I was also trying to load
charts at the end of a long day, hit a glitch in the web site, and suddenly
seemed to be going around in the kind of circles most of us have gotten into
at one time or another with software installation.

I've since heard from a professional delivery captain who has had similar
issues with other systems but no problems with Garmin.

Garmin's rather paranoid attitude towards piracy does predispose one to
expect the worst when a glitch is encountered. Now that the files are
loaded into the GPS, I think my expectations of continual problems have more
to do with the general state of the computer world than Garmin. I'm
actually feeling rather optimistic about it.

I now think the underlying system is fairly robust and will help insure that
they make enough money to stay around and support their products. They just
need a better web site designer.

--
Roger Long