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.