Solution #6
posted on Aug 02, 2007
Beresford - usenet poster
Rank: Apprentice
Rating: 0%, 0 votes
Well, I got the Meridian Color about 10 days ago. My applications may
not be similar to he-who-bikes, but here goes --
I Bought the Meridian Color from Amazon.com for$395, along with a
Bushnell Yardage Pro Scout Range finder. The transaction was pleasant
and effective. Magellan is offering a $50 rebate, which I printed from
the Amazon web site, and have submitted.
I have had a Magellan GPS 315 for quite a while, since the 12-channel
units came out at reasonable prices and edged out the old guard (5 or 6
years?) and, of course, I was very used to it. I used it in airliners,
on car dashboards, left it strapped to a pole on the roof for a week,
and I've taken it to 3 continents and many islands here in the Pacific,
and it's stood the test of time.
The two primary reasons that I wanted a new GPS are:
1) WAAS
2) an external antenna.
I was looking at the Garmin GPS V for this, and discovering that the
Meridian Color would take an external antenna distracted me.
The Meridian Color provides both. I bought a Titan III active antenna
from the GPS Store.
Putting it side by side with my nasty old GPS 315, the Meridian seems to
be a lot more sensitive (using the built-in antenna) and of course goes
from power-off to nav solution in a shorter time (usually). When WAAS
kicks in, the error deviations cinch down pretty quickly compared to the
GPS 315. And the Meridian Color does, of course, have color maps, which
will be nice if I'm ever looking for something that I don't already know
where is, but in day to day life, a GPS unit is just an NMEA pump to me.
Mostly I use it with a Handspring Visor and Cetus GPS, since I do not
know of any GPS unit that records HDOP as part of a fix.
I'm impressed and happy with my purchase.
Still:
The user interface is annoying. This isn't a really big deal, and making
a fix requires holding a the GOTO button down for about 2 seconds, and
then pressing the ENTER button. The delayed reaction is a problem
because you have to start holding the button down prior to reaching the
place where you want the fix, and then you have to reach across to the
other side of the unit to finish the fix, which creates a little bit of
instability when using one hand. The old way, on the GPS 315 was to hit
the same button twice (click,click) and it took the fix on the first
click. I would rather have the old way.
Also, the back light doesn't have a "stay the hell off" mode, which it
needs. The display has good readability in sunlight without the
backlight, so it would be very good to extend battery life by forcing
the light to stay off when you didn't want it. Plus, there's this
annoying feature that the first button press activates the light and
doesn't do what the button was supposed to do, so you have to push it
again. This keeps confusing me in the field.
Still, even with the backlight tribulations, the battery life seems to
be relatively good. I just started using NiMHs in it, and they've held
up pretty well, even though a fully charged NiMH cell has a lower
voltage than alkaline, and doesn't make the battery meter go full scale.
It also doesn't display the time that a fix was recorded, I notice,
which can be useful sometimes.
I also wish it would stand up, like the GPS 315.
The base map seems to be accurate (which isn't a given in Hawaii), and I
will probably try the Mapsend software sometime soon, I have a friend
who can show it to me before I buy it. I haven't bought any SD cards for
it, but they're relatively cheap at Costco ($49 for 128 MB) so what the
heck. As I understand it, the SD card is necessary to put MapSend Maps
into the unit.
