Also Sprach Short Wave Sportfishing :

Being a person who wouldn't own a Garmin anything even if you paid me,
the 72 is actually a glorified compass like the Magellan 300 series?

Well, a little better than that. It does have a plotter screen, so you
can display your course and record your tracks, and it does have a larger,
higher resolution screen than some of Garmin's other handheld units, but
no mapping.

BTW, I personally give Garmin two thumbs up. My GPSMap 176c has been
very reliable, and Garmin sent me a free Bluecharts CD when they released
a newer version than the one I bought. My only real complaint is that
their blank data cards are WAY too friggin expensive. I mean, a 32mb
Garmin cart costs around 60 bucks, while I can buy a 1 gig compactflash
card for $67.

Dan

--
There is no substitute for good manners, except perhaps fast reflexes.

On 13 Oct 2004 05:31:20 GMT, Marshall Banana wrote:

Also Sprach Short Wave Sportfishing :

Being a person who wouldn't own a Garmin anything even if you paid me,
the 72 is actually a glorified compass like the Magellan 300 series?

Well, a little better than that. It does have a plotter screen, so you
can display your course and record your tracks, and it does have a larger,
higher resolution screen than some of Garmin's other handheld units, but
no mapping.

BTW, I personally give Garmin two thumbs up. My GPSMap 176c has been
very reliable, and Garmin sent me a free Bluecharts CD when they released
a newer version than the one I bought. My only real complaint is that
their blank data cards are WAY too friggin expensive. I mean, a 32mb
Garmin cart costs around 60 bucks, while I can buy a 1 gig compactflash
card for $67.

I had a run in with their "technical support" a few years ago and I
vowed to never buy a Garmin product again - and I haven't. :)

That card deal is pretty much the same with all of them though. They
all have their proprietary software and somebody else's isn't good
enough. :)

Take care.

Tom

"The beatings will stop when morale improves."
E. Teach, 1717

Also Sprach Short Wave Sportfishing :

I had a run in with their "technical support" a few years ago and I
vowed to never buy a Garmin product again - and I haven't. :)

Sorry to hear that. I've certainly had run-ins with various companies
over the years, and can understand not wanting to do business with them in
the future. I'm that way with Best Buy, the electronics store, after they
refused to honor an extended warranty on some crappy VCR.

That card deal is pretty much the same with all of them though. They
all have their proprietary software and somebody else's isn't good
enough. :)

The only ones that I know of which uses standard memory is the
Lowrance Ifinder, which takes cheap and easy to find SD cards. Of course,
marine charts are still rather spendy. I really wish one of the
manufacturers would start to support the ENC format that NOAA uses for
their free nautical charts. I've actually developed some software to
convert the NOAA ENCs for use on Garmin GPSes, but it's kind of labor
intensive and the results not quite as nice as the Bluecharts... but still
useable.

Dan

--
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could
force you to do something we'd all love one another.

-- Frank Zappa.

On 13 Oct 2004 11:25:27 GMT, Marshall Banana wrote:

Also Sprach Short Wave Sportfishing :

~~ snippage ~~

That card deal is pretty much the same with all of them though. They
all have their proprietary software and somebody else's isn't good
enough. :)

The only ones that I know of which uses standard memory is the
Lowrance Ifinder, which takes cheap and easy to find SD cards. Of course,
marine charts are still rather spendy. I really wish one of the
manufacturers would start to support the ENC format that NOAA uses for
their free nautical charts. I've actually developed some software to
convert the NOAA ENCs for use on Garmin GPSes, but it's kind of labor
intensive and the results not quite as nice as the Bluecharts... but still
useable.

If they did that, they wouldn't make huge gobs of money. :)

I bet the guy who wrote the software would though. Wanna backer? :)

I have a Raymarine RC400 that has the Navionics XL3 charts - I like it
a lot. I bought it because the Navionics cart format can be used by a
number of different device makers.

All the best,

Tom
--------------

"What the hell's the deal with this newsgroup...
is there a computer terminal in the day room of
some looney bin somewhere?"

Bilgeman - circa 2004