You have to be patient when you live in Rural areas

[AZgl1800]

My GPS needs to be updated bad.
I have put it off forever it seems.

But now it thinks I am driving through cow pastures where new construction has been done for the past few years.

Garmin Express keeps telling me that it will take 5 hours, then 6 hours, and now 7 hours.

255Kbps is "high speed" out here.

[absque fenestris]

Maybe the cows live in the new constructions now...

[motoryzen]

My GPS needs to be updated bad.
I have put it off forever it seems.

But now it thinks I am driving through cow pastures where new construction has been done for the past few years.

Garmin Express keeps telling me that it will take 5 hours, then 6 hours, and now 7 hours.

255Kbps is "high speed" out here.

The better question is..why are you still using Garmin Express? google maps have been ..for years..far more accurate and updated. No insult meant but just curious, do you not have a smartphone with a decent GB plan ( such as 2GBs of data per month for 30 bucks or less) ?

[Pierre]

the Work GPS, some Years back,
would Say " Turn left" where there was No Left Turn,
and just an Farmers Gate & driveway . . .

so .. you would Just Keep Driving .. on the sealed road,
and through the green forest area, until you got to the town-site itself.

you still wish to update your GPS that will take some time.

[AZgl1800]

Why am I using a Garmin GPS?

Because it does not use DATA,
using a cell phone for long trips is a PITA and goes thru my 2gB/month data plan in minutes!

Verizon is not, and never has been price competitive.

We have T-mobile Hotspots that give us 100gB /month and carry them with us, but a cell phone is not near as good as my GPS for long trips.

I refuse to have my data on the same service as my cell phone.

You can never appreciate that unless you live in the wide open spaces in the USA.

No carrier has service EVERY WHERE.

My GPS has a 7 inch screen, cell phone screens are useless for trying to see what is up ahead.

Try using your phone for tracking thru 100s of miles where no cell phone service is available. You are crap out of luck.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Several times, when trying to drive according to directions on a friend's phone, we got lost because the idiot phone lady kept telling us to turn where there was no way to turn or go forward when the road ended at a t-bone intersection Often, I was able to find our way using road signs before the phone lady could recalculate (and this was in SoCal, where the roads signs are dismally inadequate ).

I have to think ahead but I do just fine by getting directions or print a map ahead of time from the "interwebz". I'm not a Luddite (a Laggard, maybe) but sometimes old school works best.

[absque fenestris]

No data, service dependent on higher powers, long-lasting, no updates required

[AZgl1800]

No data, service dependent on higher powers, long-lasting, no updates required


Sextant.jpg

ummm,
that don't work on a cloudy day, or during a hellish storm front.

nor does it tell me which lane I should be in up ahead to get the proper off-ramp so that I don't end up in Tim-Buk Too instead of Farmer's Junction.

GPS's are great tools, mine has Traffic Alerts, and it did a superlative job once when I had to go through Birmingham, Alabama on the way to Atlanta, Georgia....

the loop around the sound end of B'ham would have been easier to use, IF, I had been aware of the new construction going on at the time....

but alas, I was pulling my Toy Hauler trailer and just traveling down the 4 lanes happy as a lamb led to slaughter...
then all of a Sudden, the Traffic Alert came on and said it was rerouting us through town to get onto I-20 from I-22 that we were on at the time.

the normal off-ramp was a cloud of dust o'er there yonder ways.

the GPS did a superb job of wiggling us around in the inner city jungles, nary a missed turn, and 10 minutes later, we were on I-20 headed east w/o a whimper.

Google won't do that for me.... besides that, a cellphone does not show you "lane up ahead" to turn onto....
whereas, the GPS I can see the next two turns plain as day.... gives me a lot of confidence in getting to where I want to go.

the 255Kbps rural lizard finally finished, and my Garmin 2797 GPS is now up todate with the latest maps available.

Every one has their favorite method, but for me, after 50 years of paper maps ( always out of date ), and using various brands of Auto-GPS models, I much prefer the Garmin methodology...

Can't afford to go out and buy the latest Gee-Whiz gadgets anymore, Expendable Income disappeared about 11 years ago with my Retirement.

Come August, going thru B'ham again on the way to my son's home in Dawsonville, Georgia... the home of NASCAR, it is shameful that they abandoned Dawsonville and built their museum in South Carolina instead...

[Bolle1961]

Why am I using a Garmin GPS?

Because it does not use DATA,
using a cell phone for long trips is a PITA and goes thru my 2gB/month data plan in minutes!

Not if you use OsmAnd
No data connection required
OpenStreetMaps
https://osmand.net/
If you still want your Garmin GPS you can download free OpenStreetMaps
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/
Just copy / paste the maps to your device, no program necessary

[absque fenestris]

Osmand seems quite good. I tested it as a passenger on my tablet and constantly compared it with the dashboard (speedometer) and the signposts.
Also very informative on the train...

[AZgl1800]

I have a couple of decent GPS apps on my Android phone, Co-Pilot USA is one, it contains the entire North American conus on the SDcard..... it is very good for sitting at a park bench and looking up "attractions" near by.

I don't like it for traveling though, tried it several times and its' instructions are too far ahead, making them useless, or too damn late to make the turn.

I messed with the OSmand once, did not like it.

[RollyShed]

No data, service dependent on higher powers, long-lasting, no updates required


Sextant.jpg

A vernier sextant shown, not a micrometer one. Yes, the same as mine. The vernier vs micrometer is the fine reading. A micrometer one would have a calibrated fine adjustment knob.

As for inbuilt car GPS, our car was updated by Subaru a few years back. Their update was about a decade old i.e. out of date. We could tell this as a school had been built and opened and a road had had to be made to get to it. The school's opening date was known. We asked about, didn't ask for a GPS update (the desk thought it might be free) but got stuck with it and charged for it.

My partner drives, I navigate, navigate using paper maps. The GPS shows about where we are, the map shows where we're going to and how to get there.

I suppose if I popped the sun roof I could take a sextant reading - if desperate. The clock in the car isn't accurate and even the GPS clock didn't match the broadcast time signal tonight. Wrong by a second at least.

[Moem]

If you still want your Garmin GPS you can download free OpenStreetMaps
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/
Just copy / paste the maps to your device, no program necessary

That's how we update our Garmin Nũvi. It works fine. I see no reason to switch to using my smartphone for navigation. The Garmin does a great job and no one is interested in stealing them anymore, so it can be left in the car.

[absque fenestris]

A vernier sextant shown, not a micrometer one. Yes, the same as mine. The vernier vs micrometer is the fine reading. A micrometer one would have a calibrated fine adjustment knob.

As for inbuilt car GPS, our car was updated by Subaru a few years back. Their update was about a decade old i.e. out of date. We could tell this as a school had been built and opened and a road had had to be made to get to it. The school's opening date was known. We asked about, didn't ask for a GPS update (the desk thought it might be free) but got stuck with it and charged for it.

My partner drives, I navigate, navigate using paper maps. The GPS shows about where we are, the map shows where we're going to and how to get there.

I suppose if I popped the sun roof I could take a sextant reading - if desperate. The clock in the car isn't accurate and even the GPS clock didn't match the broadcast time signal tonight. Wrong by a second at least.

for RollyShed:

[cliffcoggin]

Garmin Express keeps telling me that it will take 5 hours, then 6 hours, and now 7 hours.

How are you using Garmin Express on Linux?

[AZgl1800]

Garmin Express keeps telling me that it will take 5 hours, then 6 hours, and now 7 hours.

How are you using Garmin Express on Linux?

at first I tried it with VirtualBox / Win10 but the USB port was not connecting.
started to follow the Tutorial to fix that, and decided "Why bother?"

this laptop has two SSDs in it, one is Win10 and the other is LM19.3
so, I shutdown, and booted up into Win10 and left it alone all night last night, it finally completed the update around 4 a.m. today, took something like 9 hours.... .

our thread to the Internet is very tenuous.

.

[cliffcoggin]

Ah, Windows explains it. Garmin updates are one of two reasons I start my Windows drive twice per year.

[AZgl1800]

Ah, Windows explains it. Garmin updates are one of two reasons I start my Windows drive twice per year.

yes,
and the 2nd one is TurboTax....

I hate that those folks are ignoring Linux, we don't need Windows OS anymore for 99.98% of what we/I do.

[mikeflan]

Garmin Express keeps telling me that it will take 5 hours, then 6 hours, and now 7 hours.

I like Garmin Express myself, but I think you are supposed to switch to Garmin Basecamp, or something like that.
+1 for external Garmin units. Especially for ones that are good in the woods.

[AZgl1800]

Garmin Express keeps telling me that it will take 5 hours, then 6 hours, and now 7 hours.

I like Garmin Express myself, but I think you are supposed to switch to Garmin Basecamp, or something like that.
+1 for external Garmin units. Especially for ones that are good in the woods.

I personally think Basecamp is totally frickin useless.

I just set Waypoints in the Garmin GPS for each leg of a trip, that shows me how far I am on the current's trip.

it is asinine to setup a trip with 14 or 40 way-points to the End Destination.

You have no clue how far it to today's endpoint.