Do not buy Magellan products!

Magellan's web site and support is the worst I've ever encountered! As
a result, I will never purchase or recommend a Magellan product! My
3100 was a Christmas gift.

WARNING: Magellan's update DOES NOT WORK! It caused the 3100 unit to
fail completely.

The DOS batch file: "FormatVolume.bat" is incorrect. It has an
incorrect temp directory "\MagellanGPS_UPGwizard". Magellan's update
program creates a temp directory "\Magellan_Maestro_3100_2_18".

Magellan's "Ask Maggie" feature doesn't provide any REAL information.
Magellan's support email reply didn't provide any REAL information. In
the email, the recommendation "I would like to inform you to reset the
unit once and try to update the firmware again." is crap. Does
Magellan think I didn't try that before I contacted them?

Luckily, I found a fix on the Web. I am going to share it in hopes it
will help other unfortunate customers. From:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071224223429AAytrZu

Here's a MANUAL approach that will update and fix the problem. A few
of us have used it and it works, it's just not as easy as the AUTO
approach. Magellan says an updated fix will be posted soon.

It'll take about 15 minutes if you carefully follow these step-by-
step.

1. Unzip downloaded file
2. Use WinRAR to extract the executeable (they will all be in a file
folder)
3. Create USBTRANS file in SYS folder on unit (or copy the backup that
was made on the SD card)
4. Copy the contents of COPY_GROUP 1, 11, 13, 17 to USBTRANS which is
in the SYS folder
5. Copy the contents of COPY_GROUP 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 to MAP
6. Copy the contents of COPY_GROUP 4, 6, 12, 14, 15 to APP
(NOTE: in order to copy the contents of group 14 over to the APP
folder, you will need to copy the contents of TNShell_Bitmap\Venus2 to
the same folder on the unit, that way the folder isn't just replaced.)
7. Copy contents of COPY_GROUP 9 and 10 to SD card
8. Copy contents of COPY_GROUP 16 to USR
9. Once copied over, unplug the unit and it should reset itself. Then
all should be working

DON'T FORGET to put in the UNIT_ID.DAT file back in the USBTRANS
folder if you haven't already. It may already be in there.

This manual process works and my unit is now updated and working, no
thanks to Magellan!

BTW - I did try to reply to Magellan's support email, but the reply
was returned:
The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
email@support.magellangps.com on 5/24/2008 1:35 PM

Need I say a more about these morons?

JP

I agree. I have a crossover and can you believe that there are NO vehicle
navagation map updates for the crossover, topo maps are available. why
would a company sell a device that is designed to navagate to specific
addresses, and then not provide updated maps???? the base map is three to
five years old. Magellan is not in the consumer GPS business, they just
think they are!!

Jim Stone wrote:


I agree too..

I've got an eXplorist 500. It works OK, but there was a change to
the WAAS satellite configuration. This caused the explorist to stop
picking up the WAAS satellite.

Magellan hasn't bothered with a firmware fix to address this and I doubt
they have any plans to.

The hardware isn't that bad, but, the company support stinks. What
you buy is what you're stuck with.

I won't purchase another Magellan product.

Jim Townsend wrote:


FWIW, the current European model eXplorist firmware has the correct WAAS
satellite numbers. You can download it from the Magellan website if you
register your location as being in Europe. If someone can tell me how, I
would post the update on this newsgroup.

traveller wrote:


I downloaded the Euro firmare update several months ago, before they started
denying the download to North American owners. I only installed the Euro
update a few weeks ago to see if it would fix the WAAS problem. It did.

It's pretty sad when Magellan owners have to collaborate amongst themselves
in order to solve problems because they were abandoned by the company.