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New Garmin GPSes

I ordered the Etrex Vista last week from Amazon for $213. That's the best price I'd seen after looking for a while. Then I noticed the post from Tourmeister. I'd rather have picked up the 60CS but the Vista will suit me for cycling and hiking.
 
:tab The Vistas are just incredibly slow at redrawing the screen and also the serial cable is insanely slow!! I had the one with 24mb of memory and to transfer that amount by a serial cable could easily take more than an hour. Unless there was just no way in the world I could afford it, I would not get one without the USB transfer.

Adios,
 
When I got my Vista, it was the best thing out there in the small unit size. It's been good for bicycling and hiking. Kind of hard to see in the truck, but I do use it a decent amount. On the motorcycle it works very well for offroad, and not bad for the street. Fewer shadows on the screen.

You are right about the refresh speed, but I only notice that when I'm in the truck moving fast and zoomed in. Which I seldom do, but I could see being more common on a street bike.

Used my parents 2610 recently and really like the color and the speed. Plus the auto-routing was nice. I'm trying to talk them into getting a c320 and passing the 2610 on to me. It's a vehicle based unit only, no batteries.
 
I had a lot of trouble getting and keeping satellite reception with the Etrex. Not sure why. Anyway, the 60CS is much better in that regard. I would look on Ebay for an Etrex. You can find many new ones for close to $100 in the box.

Adios,
 
Just to tell how it's been, I've had a few thousand miles with the 276c now.

It's been dusted in big bend, rained on for a couple of pie runs, through at least 4 drops of the bike one of which being a high side in sand dunes, and run in snow and ice with my front tire covering it in mud. The $30 RAM mount from Cycoactive has done well, I haven't even mounted the pricey vibe isolating touratech mount yet.

It's been mounted on my dirt bike through gnarly single track in rain and snow and rocky bouncy climbs and vibrations only a KTM thumper can deliver. It's cooked in my truck in the 98 degree sun.

It'll also go pretty much all day on a battery charge.

It's done very well. The only issue I've had was the desert dust got into the battery pack contacts and made it shut off once, one wipe with a t-shirt and that was fixed.

The 256mb card will fit all of Texas in both street and topo maps and then some, I think 2 of them will be all I'll ever need.

The screen is great, better visibility in direct sunlight than shaded IMO, and the automatic black background night screen rocks.

The options for routing are good, but the algorithms can get a bit weird on where they tell you to go if you go nuts with it. The number of settings for detail and zoom and text labels on roads/cities/rivers/elevation and other settings are impressive and let you set it up to your style, even has older datums, tides, fishing forecaster etc. built in.

The only other problem I have is wiping the screen in rain or mud or snow with dirty gloves, I've already noticed some fine scratches, it really needs some of that palm computer screen protection film.

Overall it's better than I had expected in all details, with the proprietary memory stick limitation being the only downside. It's still the best unit going IMO for now anyway.
 
My Garmin Vista C is USB and draws the maps quite fast.
It has bin a nice compact GPS. But Garmin will not make any of there softwear compatable with Mac. So I have to drag out my old clunky Winders box to load maps on it.
Now to get a mount for the GS....

Take Care
 
I drove down to Bass pro shop down the road from my house.

I guess I could have saved a few bucks online, but I didn't.

I got the automobile kit along with it that has car mounts, mapsource software, city select (detailed USA streetmap) and a 128mb card included.

I picked up the USA topo series later.
 
Never heard of caplinktech.

I just ordered my Garmin 76C from gdsdisount.com. They shipped the same day I ordered and I had it the next day. Other good online GPS dealers are gpscity.com and tvnav.com just to name a few. Gpsdiscount had the RAM mounts in stock too so I went with them.
 
Well, it looks like I'm going to go with gpsdiscount.com

Here is what I'm ordering

GPSMAP 276C
Garmin US Topo
Blank 256MB Memory Cartridge
AutoNav Kit for Garmin 276C
Ram Mount
Garmin Motorcycle Power/Audio Cable for 276C

Is there anything else I may need?
 
The only reason, I'm getting the AutoNav kit is because it comes with 128MB of memory, the City Select CD, plus all the other little things. So it comes out to be a decent deal.
 
Sounds like you got all you need.

I didn't get the extra cable, the GPS comes with one that has bare ended wires as well as a nifty marine mount for installing in a boat. I guess the audio cable already has the headphone plug etc. on the end though so that should be convenient.

I don't use the audio cues on my bike so I just bundled up the rest and hooked up the power wires to a plug I can plug into all my bikes.
 
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