Let's design a bad GPS unit.

Let's design a bad GPS (some of this might seem familiar to some, see
the next to the bottom line to find out why):

It will mispronounce streets in two different ways depending on how far
you are from them. This will be especially obvious in Hawaii

It will show things like "15:1 mile" and you will wonder what it is.

It will tell you that you are 1 mile from your exit until about 10
seconds prior to getting to the exit and then will switch to telling you
that you are 0 miles from the exit.

We certainly won't display distances to exits in tenths, only whole
miles including 0 miles just to confuse the user. No need to be
accurate OR helpful!

After passing the exit, it will continue to tell you that you are 0
miles from the exit until you pass the underpass where the road is while
all the time telling you it is the distance to the exit you passed
already.

It won't allow you to play .mp3 files until the map has finished
"Drawing" mode which can go on for quite some time. You can only get
Audiobooks to play (if you have any)

It will never switch to showing you the map, no matter how long it is
left on. It will wait for you to do something to get to the basic
function of the unit, showing the map.

We will wait quite some time before even allowing the user to select map
mode to be sure they are driving before having to hit the button to
actually view the map.

It will forget to save your current .mp3 location most of the time if
you load up "too many files" (how ever many that is) onto the flash
device but still have 100,000 bytes free.

When in routing mode, we won't show the user the vehicle speed OR
compass direction.

We won't allow routes to be saved.

We will only allow one stopover in a route that can't be saved.

We will continue to complain for miles after the user goes close to and
passes the single waypoint in a route that can't be saved and NEVER
switch to the destination and never give valid driving instructions
while insisting the user make a U-turn and go back and actually drive
right to the waypoint.

We will force the user to stop the route and reenter the destination
without the waypoint, WHILE DRIVING or force them to pull over and stop
and waste time to do this task!

We won't draw track lines or save track data even though there is plenty
of memory available for this simple task.

We will require the user to hit "Stop" twice to stop routing.

We will make the FM transmitter so very weak that the user will have to
drape the power/antenna over the rear-view mirror to hear the output in
any vehicle.

We will make the FM transmitter completely not work on most frequencies,
even completely clear ones.

We will say the letter "I" as in "I Street" as a short i as in idiot.

We will say "Main St." (from the map in Walnut Creek, CA) as "Main
Saint".

We will say anything ending in a state abbreviation as the state name
even though there is no comma prior to the letters and no periods so
"Thrifty SD" will be said "Thrifty South Dakota" while you are arriving
at the Thrifty car rental in San Diego.

Oh, wait, we don't have to do any of this... Garmin already did. It is
called nuvi. Mine does all of this and more I probably can't remember
right now.

Thanks for saving some time and taking my money by already inventing
this stupid GPS!

Never tried their Nuvi series, but I use my 60CSx both on the trail and on
the road. Works fine both ways.

Just my personal opinion, but if I want something that plays music, I'll buy
an MP3 player or use my car's stereo. If I need the 60CSx to talk to me, I
can always use nRoute and a laptop. So far, either my co-pilot / navigator
in the next seat watches the GPS for me or a mount it so I can watch it
intermittently. The beep when approaching a direction is enough to get my
attention and a quick look is all I usually need.

Like I said, that's my opinion.

Oh yeah, would you please show me your fishing license? You do need a
license for trolling, y'know.

These days, manuals are so incomplete or missing (on CD only) that you
can't find out little problems until you use the unit for a while. Some
don't pop up for months. I did not go to Hawaii with the unit until way
past time to send it back and they did not mention that they
mispronounced Hawaiian words incorrectly two different ways in the
manual. They usually don't mention things like that in manuals.

As an aside, that means that there are TWO pre-parsers in the unit. One
should be quite enough. Why would they write and include TWO???

Just Garmin, I expect.

Had I not worked in the software industry for 40 years, I would not know
how easy these things are to fix. That really reflects badly on any
company that leaves them this way - "Broken as Designed" = "B.A.D.".

Mike

On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:02:29 -0500, in alt.satellite.gps "emanon"

On Jul 19, 8:06=A0pm, Just_a_...@home.net wrote:
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* Defective By Design

Just_a_fan@home.net wrote:

so - which unit do you have ??????