On recent trip GPS almost useless - long

Mickey:
Since I'm very familiar with the area around ALL of the trip you took I
became very curious with your problem. I do not have a 680, I do have an
880. I reproduced the three major problems you described and found very
different results.
I searched for Barstow and found it on the first try, in the correct
location. I have stayed in L.V. for 38 years at the C.E. Show and visited
Death Valley almost everyone of those years while there. As you may know
Barstow is the south entrance to Death Valley. I have only had a Nuvi for 4
months (Street Pilot for 6 years & older Map 76 for quite a few years). I
"went" to Albuquerque and tried to find Barstow and made a route from
Albuquerque to Barstow and it was correct. (I checked it with M.S. Streets &
Trips and MapSource on my computer). I don't know why yours showed it near
Fresno?
I made a route from Las Vegas to Klamath Falls an it showed 698 miles
(travel time 10hrs:43min).
I have found similar problems with being on the "service" road and it thinks
I am still on the interstate. I'm not sure of this, but I think it is so
close the Gps can't distinguish the difference. It will distinguish the
difference if you are going in the opposite direction.
I want to mention that I always make a route on my computer with MapSource
first before trying to make it on the GPS. Sometimes I check the MapSource
route with M.S. Streets & Trips and even Google Earth before entering on the
GPS. That may seem like a lot of work, but I find it to be helpful
particularly if it doesn't route me the way I want to go; then I will put a
via point in to direct me.
I tried to find Gruene, TX with my GPS and MapSource, on my computer. It was
not in their database. I opened M.S. Streets & Trips and found it about 30+
miles Northeast of San Antonio. I also found it in Google Earth. It I was
going there I would have visually synced that with the map of my GPS and
entered a waypoint in the GPS for a "go to".
I don't claim to know what is wrong with your GPS but it seems to be way
more than normal.
J.B. has a good comment about resetting. I'm not aware of his fix but I do
know (from Garmin support) that you can reset your Nuvi by taking the
battery out, waiting 5 minutes and then reinserting the battery.
GPS is not perfect but I find the accuracy of my 880 to be much better than
my previous units.
Hope you get some help from this.
Regards,
Mike Flannigan

Mike Flannigan wrote:
Thanks for the reply Mike. Like your approach.

As for some of the problems I did a reset on the GPS. Didn't seem to
make any difference.

As for the Gruene Tx thing. I think you will find it in the GPS data
base IF you get somewhat close before searching for the location. I
couldn't find it when loc was here at home but when I set loc to Austin,
Gruene popped up quickly when I entered in the name. I'm beginning to
think there may not be a location problem. Could be what the GPS is
showing is the center of the current township. But to most, Gruene is
the couple blocks of the old town center and they may not be the same
thing. Did notice when looking at Gruene on Google Earth, it shows
Gruene to be in yet another location but close to the old town.

As for the Barstow problem I've set my loc to Albuquerque, did a search
for Barstow, selected Barstow Ca & clicked GO. I scanned the map and
looked at calc route. What I see is somewhat strange. Track goes past
real Barstow location, say Barstow on map and continues on to the North
of Fresno location. Only thing I can think of is some inaccurate data
on this unit. Map is latest version.

Lots of things I'd do different if I had to do this over again. Got a
new laptop 2 days before flying to Austin. Didn't have too much time to
get all my typ software installed. If I had had the time I would have
loaded Streets & Trips on the machine and relied more on that than the GPS.

As for the Vegas to K-falls leg. Giving it some thought, I know the
distance given are just point to point distances but sometimes thinking
is not always as clear as one would like. I still think the GPS should
be a little more clear the default distance given are straight line
values. Would be nice if there was a button on one of the screens to
permit you to show the real calc distance over the est distance. I'm
sure I'm not the lone ranger on getting caught on this distance thing.
And out in some places in the West, being off a hundred mile or more can
get you into trouble. Be nice if Garmin would give this some thought.

On the frontage road problem in Austin, unit was reporting accuracy
better than 20' and moving off to frontage road shouldn't be an issue.
I suspect there is something in the machine programing that shows you
dead on on the hwy all the time regardless of accuracy of map plays a
big part in the problem. The "magnet" that keeps the vehicles on track
is too strong IMO.

Have to agree that on this trip my problems were way more than I've ever
experienced but then I've not taken it on a long trip before. Best I
can hope for is in the letter's I'll be sending off to Garmin and
Navteq, I'll get some kind of response as to the cause of the problems.

Mickey

st
o
S.

Mickey

Certainly agree with you to verify all the route prior to departing on
S&T. That applies to what I have , iGuidance 3 and Garmin CNNA2009 all
of which are run on my netbook

Daniel

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 10:36:16 -0500, Mike Flannigan wrote:


Both my wife's Nuvi 260 and my Nuvi 265WT don't have any obvious way of
removing the battery. I believe the batteries are not user replacable.

Traveling Man wrote:
If the 2xx series is anything like the 6xx series, there is a reset
button behind the folding ant.

Mickey