> I agree that voice-prompts in heavy traffic are a near requirement. > The Vista and Edge, et al. all use the Garmin maps, so there is no > 'map' advantage (i.e. better maps on car-based units) to any other unit.
I guess I'm an exception, since I used my Garmin 76 CSX to navigate out of the train station in Montepellier through heavy traffic, as well as into Geneva. It's not the worst thing in the world to miss a turn in heavy traffic in a city, because the auto-rerouting just figures it out and you just pick up the next turn. If you have it turned to "show map mode", it's very usable on a bike. In a car, where you can't just hop a curb and wait for the rerouting, that might be problematic. :-) > I doubt the Edge does voice prompting. I think Garmin wants people The Edge doesn't do voice prompting simply because a speaker loud enough to cut through traffic noise will be prohibitively heavy, draw excessive battery life, and few people will pay for one (in either cost, battery life or weight). Folks are already complaining about the Edge's battery life. > I am sure you can use the Edge for hiking, mtn. biking with Garmin > topo maps (note, you MUST use Garmin maps). Not sure if it has a > compass and altimeter, but it will tell you direction when you are > moving, and altitude with topo maps. There are free sources of maps, but Garmin's are the most convenient and I haven't really investigated free sources, but rest assured folks to use free sources. The Edge 705 has compass and altimeter, but not the 605. > 1. With built-in batteries, you will have to keep them charged. I > would guess battery life on the order of 16 - 24 hrs. This is a less of a big deal to me now than it was, now that I've found a reasonable solution: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2008/06/review-gomadic-charging-system.html > 2. With the mapping Edge units you will need maps. Maps cost about > $100 for North America roads, the same for Topos. If you want to use > for auto use, I'm not sure if Topo maps do the auto-routing. You Topo maps do not allow the unit to do auto-routing. All of Europe is available for about $125 or so, which is a great deal. > will also need a memory card, about 4 GB to hold all the NA maps. If 2GB is sufficient with the NT Garmin maps. Look for those. In fact, with the NT maps, I can load all of North America, and still have about 800MB left for track storage. In any case, many of the Garmin units won't handle more than a 2GB microsd card anyway, so I would check carefully before buying a bigger microsd card! > you use a Mac, you will NOT be able to load maps to the Edge (or any > other Garmin unit or any other GPS for that matter) That has changed recently, but since I dislike Macs and most Apple products, I won't talk anyone else into trying to use it with a Mac. But one of my friends here has a Mac, and uses an Edge 605. If it matters I can ask her about it. (Don't expect a reply until after the new year, though!) > 3. If you use for hiking, driving, in addition to biking, the unit > will not keep track of biking mileage (i.e. you can't turn mileage > accumulation off while driving, at least I can't figure out how). Heh. The easy solution is to not drive. :-) -- Piaw Na http://piaw.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bicycle Lifestyle" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bicyclelifestyle?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
