GPS 76 very early comments

After fighting with the delivery company (Purolator) to tell the drive
to actually deliver the box instead of returning it to the wharehouse
every night, I finally got the new GPS 76.

Here are very first impressions:

The white plastic "outline" on top of the unit is extremely distracting
from the screen. Causes eyes to adjust to the very bright white (in the
sun) instead of the darker LCD display.

Some marketing people definitely got involved unfortunatly. When I first
saw a satellite bar, I said "wow, only one satellite and it is already
locked into it". Turns out that they use grey contents instead of white
contents to denote a satellite not yet locked in. Why didn't they leave
it in the MUCH more obvious empty bars ?


Some lawyers definitely involved with that damned warning screen when
you turn it on that requires you to press a specific key to get out of.
Show that Garmin is now catering to the masses instead of people who
really know what a GPS is and need to constantly show that warning
because they know the "masses" will not use the units properly. Below

I had to use a magnifying glass to find what the blotch was next to the
time in some setup menu. Turn out it is "LCL". One very good example of
some programmer/marketing guy wanting to show off the added resolution
of the LCD display by using small fonts, even if it makes it unreadable
in real life. Good design on paper for the marketing folks, bad design
for use in rteal life in the outdoors where things are moving and the
last thing you want is to have to concentrate on the unit to try to read
it. You should only have to take a peek at the display and immediatly
see the data and return to what you were doing before.

The backlight is very annoying, you have to press I don't know how many
keys to get the back light to stay on but the backlight/contrast menu to
go off. And if you press POWER on too long, the unit shuts off WITHOUT
WARNING. (on the GPS II, you'g get the spinning globe display for a
couple fo seconds allowing you to release the button if you didn't
really want to shut off.


The Unit is HUGE.


Overall, I am definitely not impressed. My initial impulse is to just
go to Garmin and pay the USD$89 to get my GPSII+ fixed up. It may have
coarser display, less fancy fonts, but in the end, it is much more
readable in the sun, and is smaller.

I was hoping for a WOW factor when I got it. I got the total opposite,
it makes me appreciate my GPSII+ even more, even though I thought the
GPS II was bulky with its triangular shape.


Again, those are first impressions. I have to decide if it is worth
forcing myself to use it to adapt to the new device, or whethert I
should just quit while I am ahead.

If I keep it, I will definitely have to paint the white plastic. Anyone
know what type of black paint I could use on the plastic which will not
affect the reception of the antenna inside ?

That's the reason I decided to get the 60csx instead of the 76 series.
The 76 is just too big, feels like a brick! ;)

Sounds like you'll do fine with a regular 60 series. Upgrading from an
eMap, I definitely had the wow factor. The screen is very nice and the
fonts are very readable. Also no glaring white to distract my eyes in
the sun. In fact, the color LCD looks sooo nice under the sun I am
still amazed.

I tried a Rino unit (gps/walkietalkie), the 120 I believe, and the
pixels/screens are just too small it is uncomfortable to look at. I
think this is what you are experiencing. In fact, I recall seeing the
LCL on the unit, and couldn't make out what it is..

Did you go to the store and looked at the unit before you buy it? Have
you seen the 60C?

Raymond

nospam.gps@none.com wrote:


Colour is nice if you have a large display and a unit that is mounted in
a car. But for my uses, it isn't becessary and if it means less
autonomy, I prefer black&white.

Nop. All I could find at the local stores (I didn,T look that hard mind
you) was mapping units and they didn't have the 76 range. This started
off as a desire to fix myGOS II+. I had sent an email to Garmi but
necver got a reply. Started to look on Ebay and found some "new" GPSII
units but shipping was so expensive that I started to look for brand new
unit to replace my GPS II+.

By the time I had ordered this 76, I found out that Garmin still did fix
GPS II+ units for USD $89, but again, shipping would end up costing me
about $200 total in canadian funds, especially if Garmin shoips it back
with UPS which would cause me great pain and costs once I get the random
bill from the customs highway robbery firm (brokers).

More comments:

Interestingly, the display flickers when the backlight is turned on.
(but steady when backlight is off).

The "Active route" display showsx only one number next to each waypoint.
The GPS II could show 2. (I had Distance and ETE). But this unit gives
me much wider choice of values to displays, but that also means that if
I want to flip between DST and some other value, I have to "scroll"
through a longer list of items.


The Track is ludicrous. To setup track recording, you don't just set it
up from the "track" page, you have to press menu-menu to get to the
setup menu, then choose track, enter, press menu , choose setup track
log and press enter.

Tried the simulator mode, and it didn't seem to record a track.


Readable lat-long is only available on the satellite page. (and the
format changes if you press the rocker keys, so you can't lock it to
your desired format). You can have the lat-long displayed in other
pages, but it is squished into a small area, and you don't get to select
the format and it is shown in a format I don't likle (hh mm s even
though in the setup I specified hdddd.ddddddddd)


Right now, I have a very bad taste which reminds me just too much of my
experience with PSION. First PDA I had, I loved. Then they came out with
a new generation and I figured it would be a an upgrade. But it turned
out to be a dud with focus of marketing of features, fancy fonts ,
hiearchical menus etc, instead of keeping the focus on usability like
its prececessor had done so well with an even less advanced interface.


My experience so far, while not yet valid because it has only been
"first impression", gives me a bad taste for any new Garmin product
because I have to assume that they now all sport "marketing" ahead of
"usability" in the user interface design.

The Garmin bike mount has the same handlebar clamp with the flanges
going to break soon. And the cradle design is much harder to attach to a
home made handlebar clamp compared to the GPSII cradle. Thta ceradle
would be good on a boat or possibly a road car.

The color provides a lot of information that would require pixels in BW.
I used to think that color was frivolous. Now I find it hard to read the
etrex mono screen at all. The product comparison chart shows longer life
for the GPSMap 76c than for the 76.


If you press Mark from any screen, the current location is displayed.


And it seems that the taste is going to cloud your continued ownership.

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5

Ok, Took the 76 for a bike ride. A GPS only comes to full life when it
is in motion.

1- Garmin Bike mount.

Surprisingly, it survived the short 30km bike ride, but it is flimsy and
I certaintly wouldn't trust it. You HAVE to put the lanyard around the
handlebar to catch it when it will eventually fall.

The bike mount is does not support the unit via its centre of gravity.
The support is towards the front of the unit. The latch that "locks" the
unit in unlatched itseld during the ride, but the unit only slid forward
in the craddle about 1cm, so plenty of time to pull it back in and
reclose the latch. However, because the support point is towards the
front of the unit, it means that most of the unit is actually aft of the
handlebar. One has to be carefull when going up hills that your knee
doesn't kick the GPS off under certain circumstances (because the unit
is so far back).

If I shake the receiver in my hand, I hear nothing loose in it. But
while on the bike, there was a lot of noise of stuff that appeared loose.

And after about 15 minutes, the unit started to have its display go off
for half a second and come back on. Later in the ride, the unit would
just shut off. I suspect vibration and batteries. I had that with the
GPS II+ but only with duracell batteries. (use of some scrotch tape
around the batteries tends to fix the problem on the II+, not sure about
thsi unit since batteries are stored in a totally different compartment.


However, when I started, I waited until the unit had locked in, but as
soon as I got on the bike, it beeped telling me it had lost satellite
fix. It eventually regained it and I set off once more and this time it
*seemed* to work. However, as soon ce I was in a treed area, the GPS
often would lose the fix. I don't recall this happening with my II+.
Anyone have a comment on GPSII+ vs 76 in terms of sensitivity ?

Because of the position on the bike, perhaps the antenna of the 76 is
just enough aft compared to that of the II+ that my body provides way
more shade.


When the unit was shutting off regularly, I noticed one more design
flaw. The satelliite page (the frist one you see after all the warnings)
does not have the battery level. The unit would often shut off just
after it got to that page, so I had no idea of what it thought was the
battery level. The GPSII+ was superior on that level because it had the
battery level on the first page (and no stupid warnings to please lawyers).


The "trip computer" accessed though MENU-MENU-ENTER is a nice feature.
It has good advantage over the II+ because you can easily reset all of
the values with one function. On the II+, it was a lengthy process to
reset individual fields one by one. However, while riding the bike, that
function is useless because the titles are unreadable. Another "windows
weenie" design where the look was more important than functionality:
they put the titles against a grey background, so the contracts is not
strong enough to really read it quickly while on the move. Also, much
screen real-estate is lost because of the gray background and borders,
and this forces the use of smaller fonts which makes it even harder to
read the titles. The numbers may be readable, but you don't know what
they are.


SPEED: At first, over flat areas, it seemed to work fine and update.
When I went up the first hill, I didn't have a lock due to trees, so I
could not gauge. I had noticed however that wben slowing down very
gast, the GPS would take a few screen update cycles to come to the new
slowler speed.

But going down the first hill, my bike computer went up to 51km/h, but
the GPS only rose to 36km/h. I then tried to set the "Speed filter" to 2
(lowest acceptable value) and then, the GPS consistently indicated a
mucgh slower speed (about 60 to 75% of real speed. For instance, going
at 20km/h, the GPS would show 12km/h. The GPS II+, despite SA, was
pretty good at following the speed.

The GPS shows I reached a max of 39km/h during this trip.



The ability to define up to 6 fields on two displays is neat. However,
again, because the titles are in such fine print, you can't really see
them while riding a bike. Remember that one should be able to just
glance quickly at the display and not have to stare at it trying to
figure out what field means what.

The GPS II+ had a nice layout with 4 fields displayed at each corner of
the map, over the map, without any fancy squares/borders, and with a
title that was in big enough letters. And because the values with far
from each other, it seems easier for the brain to focus on just one
corner of the display to see the value.



Also, while searching for satellites, the lat/long fields on that page
are blank. So you don't know where the GPS thinks it is located which is
something one wants to know to ensure the GPS has an approximately
correct location in order to determine what sky to expect. The satellite
numbers are also much smaller than on the 2+ even though the screen uis
bigger and that page has less information on that page than the 2+.



The track display sees to be very fine and more precise than the GPSII+,
especially since you can zoom in to 5m compared to 500m on the GPS II+.
Also, when near a waypoint, the 76 will display metres with decimals so
that seems to provide more info than the II+.

The "GOTO" function requires more keystrokes. Once you've selected a
waypoint, you have to look at it and confirm it.
(there are advantages and disadvantages to this).



At home, when I turn the backlight on, looking at the highway display,
the LCD fluctuates. And of course, the track of tiny dots against a grey
background is barely visible.


Seems to me that the design of the screens was done to look good on
powerpoint slides to product managers instead of being really usable on
the actual production units sold to customers.