This week I bought my first gps, a Garmin 765wt.

First off it had no manual, I had to download the 76 pages in pdf and print it myself. Not so easy on dialup. Worse for some reason they formatted the document to fit five inch (14cm) square paper. I don't usually use this size. No matter, I elected to fit to page and got it as a 8" (200mm) square print centered on A4 sheets. This is an improvent on teh microscopic fonts they used in the original. Had a read. No where could i find any details as to what size and speed of sd card the machine takes, so emailed a query off to Garmin. I was hoping to install the rest of western and some of eastern Europe in it. Now I will buy real maps instead, much less trouble, cheaper and more reliable.

Connected it to charge the battery, but had no battery indication of charge status until after about seven hours when I switched it off. Then on again.

Then tried to register it.

For some reason it wont accept the logon, it says mismatch between password and user name. So I try to get them to send me my password again to see what they think it is. To that I get invalid email address. so I cant register, it wont let me re register or send me anything to help.
So I email them with details of that problem.

Now it is charged I thought I would put my home address in the machine. It simply wont accept it so I cant go home because it wont accept my home address. I entered the waypoints of my home ( from a Tom Tom) and I can store that as a way point, but cannot make the waypoint into Home.
So I brave the cold and wind and stand outside to let it find itself. The map it displays coincides to where it is, so that is something. I store here as home. then look in Home to find my address. According to it, I live in a house about seven miles and two towns away with a different name and in a different village.

Now I know Tom Tom, Viamichelin, mappy, google and the AA can all find my house from the address, only Garmin cannot.

Still no response whatever from Garmin, not even an automated acknowledgement from any email.

Tomorrow I will try to send it back, and spend the money on real maps. Forgetting the cost of the machine, it is cheaper and quicker to buy real maps than do an online update anyway.

I hate non functional technology...

Compare the difference, last October I bought a £50 satellite box from Bush. It developed an odd fault last week. With just one phone call they swapped it out for a new one. Problem fixed in minutes.

Believe it or not, some people rave about Garmin customer service. I share your intense disapointment. Just wait until you buy maps or updates, I dread the registration process that I generally don't buy updates anymore.

I would buy from a different company in a heartbeat, but have not heard good things about TomTom either, so I think for now we're stuck.

well just up front... I don't defend Garmin or even it's software policy which I think is greedy crap anyway...

But hey... I'm a long time Garmin user since 1995, started of with a Garmin 40, swapped over to a 12XL, had a few Rinos regarding there map capability than a 76CS with even bigger map option (yea 24MB) and now my latest toy is a 60CX with a miniSD chip of the latest Europe NT-maps-2010 that contains the Baltic states and Turkey as well.... I used "all" of this GPS revisers on bikes very successfully and still do, cross country in Offroad conditions and travelling over land including using all my senses about the position of the sun, a compass in my pocket and a ruff map to get the over all overview.

let me put some thing right.... the Garmin units are "GPS tools" Navi boxes like TomTom and so on are some thing to play with instead of using maps for on the road for tech-freaks. OK Garmin making there money by selling the map software, that's a fact,and the factory installed "world basemap" is useless you have to buy either the sourcemap software or the map pre installed miniSD chips to be able to use the unit and it's capabilities !
But hey... a GPS is a guiding tool only, that helps you not to get lost or to find your way without asking the folks by side of the road that's all.

And yes I agree, even if you would get the proper user manual with the unit in it's box, Garmin is confronting and attacking you with there concept of knowing what a waypoint, route and any other navigation things meanings are and expecting you would know what they are talking about and know how to navigate, they don't tell you or explain what the hell you gona do with it.... well back to the old days where you had a GPS unit with small display in grey with thin black lines and a few dots as waypoints and most important there was NO way to follow the image of such as a "basemap or address database" ! in this days you had to mark all your waypoints your self on a blank empty screen to find your way back or just use it as a ruff indication where you had been or wanted to go, not to drift off for to much. In this days I usually did set my waypoints to main junctions or fuel stations, to places where I had to take care to not miss the turn and so on... still, even now with a big address and map database, still navigate my way this way just following "my" dots, now just with the luxury of seeing the surrounding of the route I did set up in forehand.

my tip... don't count on any electronic wonder box... use the one you are growing up with, that's the best computer you can trust... use your head, common sense and a bit of luck to navigate your way around the world, every thing else is nice to have but not the last word at all in live.

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

Spooky, somehow you have misunderstood me.

In theory you can load the device up with your HOME as a way point named HOME and then navigate to it by navigating to HOME.
Sadly it does not have my address in its database, although everyone else has the 200 year old farm named correctly.
If i fire it up in my back yard and set where I am as Home. It gives me an address that is 7 miles off. Although it does know the actual position of my HOME, it cant identify it and it takes me to the place that it can identify which is 7 miles away.

It would be nice if Garmin had some sort of after sales service.

I am another in the garmin dark. Just bought a n oregon 550. I have learned what a way point is and now am going to routes and tracks and routable and gpx and mapsourse and
At least I got an instruction cd and had it downloaded in my netbook.
It definitaly requires more knowledge then required for my nuvi 265.
Huge learning curve right off but hopefully it will level out soon.
Good luck
Bill

I have a Garmin 2610 and am pretty pleased with it, although near to my house it ALWAYS wants to send me a longer route, whatever I set it to?:confused1:
I learnt more from Tim Cullis when he gave a presentation about them at the HU meet in Ripley a couple of years back than I ever did from the manual
oldbmw, you are lucky, my 2610 thinks my home is in Taiwan!!!

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'He who laughs last, was too slow to get the joke'
Never confuse the map with the journey.

Got the same problem even on Google-earth, Google-maps, and visitors can't find my place (it's a 150 year old farm in the middle of nowhere as well) with there navi toys... never bothered me.. regarding using my own waypoints (even my own waypoint did move around on the display over the years regarding the "miss-configurations of the satellite for civilian use"), so again, never rely on any database. My guess is that all this hightech services doing a good job in dense areas, but if it comes to country sides, well the exactness of there databases uploaded to there units is always less precise... not even to mention the shift for civilian use...

I agree with your wish in definitely ! luckily I never had to ask them...

here the important information of Garmins user manual, may explaining a bit dull that you can't relay on there units:
the small print:
---------------
One of the goal of Garmin is to provide customers with the most complete and accurate cartography that is available to us at reasonable cost. We use a combination of governmental and private data sources, which we identify in product literature and copyright messages displayed to the consumer. Virtually all data sources contain some inaccurate or incomplete data. In some countries, complete and accurate map information is either not available or is prohibitively expensive.
---------------
well... there you go... as I tried to explain... never ever rely on any electronic device, at all, always use your common sense.
I guess you have to set your HOME as a "waypoint" and store it!
switch the "auto routing OFF" and navigating to your HOME from a distance use the "GO TO" option in the unit, that will direct you to your fixed waypoint, instead of using the internal database, which can never be perfect.

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

right that's what it's all about...

regarding the precision of any GPS or navi, around this days... you may can put the following wisdom in context to it.. taken out of "Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER" in hope he don't mind mention it here on HUMM...
it's all about believe and reality... make up your mind regarding the GPS units...

now the hype is like this:
---------
Susan: “All right, I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need … fantasies to make life bearable.”
Death: “No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: “But Tooth fairies? Hogfathers?”
Death: Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: “So we can believe the big ones?”
Death: “Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.”
Susan: “They’re not the same at all!”
Death: “Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.”
Susan: “Yes. But people have got to believe that or what’s the point—”
Death: “My point exactly.”
---------

so do you believe in the precision of a commercial device ?
you may end up wrong or in the ditch some where if you do, but believe is the engine that keeps the human world spinning around...

hope this will help you to get over the misery you discovered with your new Garmin...

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

I can get home by navigating to my nearest city, from there I Know my way home
The sad thing is all the other databases know my home, all I have to do is type in the address. The garmin wont allow me to type in the address because half way through it decides to give me a choice of three wrong options. Using the correct way point for here will be translated to a house seven miles away the other side of my nearest city.
On playing with it today, and it also does not seem to know of the existence of the city of St Jean pied de port. It does know about a village near it though.. I really need to keep my old Michelin maps in order to find places near to where I want to go that garmin knows about.
I am not trying to test it to its limits, just want to be able to use the HOME feature, and was trying to plan a trip into the Spanish pyrenees which will take me through St Jean on to Auritz in Spain and then along the foothills. This is a really nice ride I have planned for May. I may yet buy some real maps, not sure what I can use the garmin for.. maybe a paperweight?
Update.. It also can't find several small towns which are marked on my michelin maps. It can't even find Pussy, so how useless is that?

Are you sure you re running on the City Navigator® NT map and not the basemap?


My version of City Navigator finds Saint Jean Pied de Port but it has to be written " Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port". I have only tested it in mapsource not with the GPS.

Thanks, yes, it will find it if , and only if, I type exactly this "Saint-Jean-pied-de-port"
which is not how it is spelt normally
I would have expected, correction I was sure it would find it from just "st jean" and onwards, it does some others but not that one.
I am going to have fun locating Mont st michel, or is that Mont-st-michel or mont-saint-michel or le mont st michel or le-mont-saint-michel?

well lets go back to your 1st post...
by now I realised that you have a NUVI 765T type of in car "electronic map box" and not a real GPS navigator unit right ?

now if I got that right in the end... you may stuck with the build in software for now, I'm not familiar with the NUVI range, so my question is:

is your NUVI 765T able to load the external city navigator-NT software ?
how many individual waypoints can you store ?
how many of your own waypoints can be used to build up a route ?

my 60Cx can store up to 1000 if I remember it right and mainly using this database for targeting navigation in 50 routes.
any unknown coordinates can be found in a separate database that's depending on the additional software you have to pay for separately.
the build in world map don't know any address database at all, at least in my case so I had to buy the miniSD chip to make use of the "auto-routing" option and a better resolution on the screen.

I know the cheap TomTom box a bit and there is a expensive option to upload add-on software for all sort of needs from over the net... but still this fancy "road-nav" boxes are not a very advanced navigator as we know it from the "old days"... yes they are electronic map-boxes meant to replace the big bulky paper books.... no more no less...

depending what you are looking for... well you may have the wrong unit in the first place....

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

from the manual,

Maps & Memory:
Basemap:
yes
Preloaded maps:
yes
Ability to add maps:
yes
Built-in memory:
internal solid state

Accepts data cards:
SD™ card (not included)
Waypoints/favorites/locations:
1000
Routes:
10

Question, what size and speed sd card is good for it.


it also has
nüvi 765T
Preloaded City Navigator® NT for Europe (full coverage)
Lifetime traffic¹
FM traffic receiver with vehicle power cable

latest 2010 maps.


My purpose was to have help passing around and through major connurbations preferably by not using the Peages (toll roads). I can do most of most journeys easily from maps, but it can get a bit hectic in strange cities. Also if I go wrong in a city, I had hoped the recalculate would eventually get me back on trackto my destination.

OK than...
regarding the manual you should be fine at least concerning the additional maps !
dono about the speed for the card, but any should be ok, as long you look out for the storage size of it, which the unit can cope with... (my 60Cx can take up to 8GB, the miniSD containing the NT-2010 maps only needs 1.8GB and the pre loaded maps on this miniSD cards is 2GB only, just to have some additional space to fit some tracks too)

your purpose seams reasonable to me... to make live a bit more comfortable that's OK...

so.. dose the unit has this City navigation-NT 2010 already installed, or did you just read that of the box ?
in case the unit is equipped with a miniSD you may only got a 1GB card in it or less, with no maps at all, in that case you are running on the world basemap I presume...
in case you got the city navigator-NT 2010 DVD sold with the unit you have to buy a empty miniSD card and transfer all the maps to the unit with the sd card placed in to it, or use a SD reader if you got the miniSD adapter card that got the size of a std SD card.

Now just to let you know... the process of transferring all European maps to a 2GB miniSD last some 12 hours ! one reason why I bought the Garmin miniSD with the pre loaded maps in the end and not the DVD !

Well you where on about that you would like all maps like the European and eastern maps on your unit... well in that case you have to buy either both pre loaded miniSD and swoop them as you go, or you have to get both DVDs install them and transfer all maps to the unit at ones. because all maps will be stored as "one" file to the miniSD, the mapsource program is recompiling the lot together and sending it to the card.

check out what is installed in the unit, there must be a point in the menu that is showing you what maps are active and you may find out that way what part is missing that coursing you headache...

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

I use an older GPS but I think that on a GPS with preloaded maps you have to activate the maps (via Internet) before you can use them. It has something to do with Garmis free upgrade of maps within a few months.