My new toy - Automobile oriented GPS Receiver -Sept 25, 2007
A friend bought a "refurbished" Garmin C330 at Fry's on sale for $179 and was happy enough to pass the word - His recommendation induced at least two others (including me) to buy one.
After struggling for several years with laptop GPS with Delome (big mistake) and Microsoft (much better, but a laptop in the front seat is difficult at best)
I appreciate just about everything about it
- Big print and wide lines for my no-longer-young eyes
- Really carefully and well worked out Graphical User Interface, not too much, not too little, just right :-))
- Handy touch screen control
- Woman's voice to keep me company ;-))
- Handy size, relatively painless price, excellent mounting, ...
- MUCH more local map detail than available in my old Garmin GPSmap176
The Krazy Kalifornia legislature, in its infinite/nonexistent wisdom, decreed that no suction mounted devices may be mounted on the front windshield - I understand this includes a compass? :-((
Low mount
| 
| 
|
High mount
| 
| 
|
Maybe this is a bad old habit from using hiking/nautical GPS units, but I like to be able to
be at a point and set this point into the unit without having to look up an address - which may
not exist or be too remote. This (maybe non-typical) operation is not obvious and not described in
the Garmin literature.
LaFarr documents this operation as follows:
|
"Yesterday, around noon in front of the USGS building, Ed and I wanted to
mark the front steps. I had put in the Middlefield street number, but it
stopped on the road. It turns out: From the "Where to" you can "Browse Map"
which shows you a map of where you are at. There you can "Save" which will
assign the point 001 but you can change the name using the "Edit."
"But even better you can use the "-" to zoom out until you can see a location you want to save (I used Clarkston) when you touch that location you can then zoom in using "+" and by zooming and touching you can get right down to the 80 foot scale. So what you touch should be within about 20 feet; then Save, Edit, Rename, and even choose a map icon. " ... |
Tom J. documents finding rest stops as follows:
|
Another alternative to finding and marking / saving rest stops in the c330 is to set up navigation to a specific destination. Then once under way go to "Where to?", then touch "Near..." at the bottom of the screen and then (and this is the critical item) "My Current Route", then "Auto Services", then "Rest Area/Tourist Info". The "My Current Route" would also narrow down food, lodging, etc.
When I do this with Los Angeles as a destination from home the display lists all 5 sets of rest stops along the way on I-5 (at 45, 98, 163, 223 and 275 miles from home). The only problem is that it displays all 10 rest stops (both southbound and northbound). The program should have been designed to only list southbound rest stops or should include SB or NB in the name of each rest stop. At least the listing display tells how far to the next rest stop since the stops are usually, but not always, close for both directions. |
If you have comments or suggestions, Send e-mail to Ed Thelen