Hi Lisa, I have been using a Magellan Meridian Platinum for about 8 months. It was a tough choice but after having a Garmen eTrex Vista that kept crashing on me, and getting a poor response from Garmin, I wanted to try something else. My goals were to have a unit that would be used as much of the time in the car as in back country. Reliability was key importance. The good points for the Meridian is the large LCD that is easy for me to read when down by the gear shift. The eTrax while has a sharper screen is much smaller and more difficult to read if not held close up. The Maridians navigation buttons are easy to use. The reviews I have read show the road maps to be more accurate and from a much newer resource than those for the Garmin eTrex's. On the other hand the Garmin topo maps are a bit better. I use a 128 MB memory card with my unit with a little tweaking which works well despite the makers claims that it won't work. I got this unit because I thought it would be very useful to upload topo maps to it since I love hiking. Here is the shocker. The maps SUCK! Topo map makers claim to have trails and topo features as their selling point. Well. First I tried the Magellen Map Send Topo $100. It did not have almost any trail I have ever heard of on it State or National. NOT even the Appalachian Trail where I have hiked it. It did not even show many of the state parks I like to visit. Their street maps despite having good reviews have quite a few mistakes. Then I compared its topo feature to view some cliffy area at a local state park. Boy was I shocked to find out that it totally lacked any detail that would have suggested any cliff, or steep hill for that matter. Next I tired DeLorme's TOPO USA ($100) which is a multi CD topo program. Although it was far superior at showing topo features in places like Washington, when I looked for the clifs in the my state park, it just showed them as rolling hills! I sure am glad I am not using these instruments to navigate around a cliff in a blizzard. NOTE, as with all brands of GPS, you can not upload another makers maps to the unit. You must view them on screen and print them out. You can only upload the waypoints or other data. Apparently TOPO USA gets their data from the same provider as Magellan as I found that many of the errors that I found on one would be on the other. I did spend about half an hour going over some of the errors with Magellan's engineers and was impressed at their interest. I did not call DeLorme though. So really, the maps are lousy on both the unit and on the PC. That said, I still like the mapping software from both companies as it is better than nothing for general use, but NOT for critical use. When in areas where cliffs and other substantial obstacles or hazzards exist, you really need to rely on good old paper maps from USGS or someplace like Trails Illustrated. Then again, I think a person has to be a fool to be in the backcountry and rely on any electronic gaditry anyway. If I am going to carry any form of navigational aid, it will include at least one paper map and compass. Since this is in regards to using on your kayak, lets think of water proofness. Although my unit is supposedly submersible I treat it as if it were not, just as with my submersible VHF radio. I keep it in a clear electronics pouch on deck or inside a deck bag. Although I have not heard of GPS failures do to water, I have heard of many VHF radios that had quick and unexpected deaths when exposed to water despite being guaranteed to withstand it. Guarantees don't do you a darn bit of good when your out on a remote lake or ocean. The good thing about the eTrex is that it is much smaller and lighter than the Meridian. Signal pick up times in my experience are hugely exaggerated. The only time I have every had a GPS lock on quickly is when in an open field if I have not moved at all since turning it off and that only a couple minutes have passed. Normally it takes at least a minute for the three units I have tried. Sometimes several minutes. On one last note, I find a good GPS resource to be is <joe.mehaffey.com>. The site has lots of good info and links. Unfortunately it is not the best organized but hey, he does it on his own time and it is a great rescue. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. Bob Brubaker, Chicago .......................................................... Robert Brubaker "Hitch your wagon to a star." Ralph Waldo Emerson http://home.earthlink.net/~rbrub/ .......................................................... *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Dec 04 2002 - 18:11:26 PST
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