[time-nuts] Problems with Garmin - maybe we should cut them alittle slack

[William H. Fite]

You are correct, John, and I apologize for my verbosity on the topic.
Others may have the last word, if desired, I'm done.

Bill



On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 8:48 AM, John Ackermann N8UR <jra at febo.com> wrote:

> All, this has drifted way off track and should have stopped many messages
> ago.  I really hate having to jump in here but I've been getting
> well-justified private complaints.
>
> Can we *please* try to keep things on topic???
>
> John
> ----
>
> J. Forster said the following on 01/01/2011 12:14 AM:
>
> HNY,
>>
>> I disagree. The reason a high performance GPS costs 100K or more is that
>> the engineering cost is ammortized over a few hundred units.
>>
>> Say the thing cost $10M to develop and you make 1000, that's $10,000 NRE
>> per unit.
>>
>> However, if you have a successful commercial unit and sell 1,000,000 the
>> NRE is $10.
>>
>> I'd doubt any of the hand held GPS units costs even $50 in million
>> quantities.
>>
>> Ditto with the SW.
>>
>> The errors I've seen are map, not position, errors.
>>
>> YMMV,
>>
>> -John
>>
>> ==================
>>
>> Hi,
>>>
>>>   first, a happy and hopefully healthy New Year to all of you.
>>>
>>> I think, some of you are going slightly overboard, in what you expect a
>>> $150 Dollar car navigator should do,
>>> I also don't believe some of you   you realise what exactly it was
>>> designed  to do.
>>>
>>> It is not a device to accurately shoot a missile trough somebodies
>>> toilet window and hit a specified turd in the bowl.
>>>
>>> It is designed to get you relatively easy and close to a specified
>>> designation. preferably when used in a motor car
>>>
>>> This it does perfectly well.  It may be a few meters out from an exact
>>> house number, but it got you there without you having
>>> to look at the map, (or worse get your spouse to read the map and
>>> navigate you).
>>>
>>> It improves the road safety, especially at night time, when you often
>>> don't see the street names and have to slow down to a crawl
>>> with a lot of cars bunched up behind you.
>>>
>>> The mind boggles if some of you think because the GPS is not 100%
>>> accurate, The Fire brigade gets either lost, or tries to extinguish the
>>>   house next door to the burning one, just because the GPS is 30m out.
>>>   What you're actually are saying is: The Fire brigade is full of idiots.
>>>
>>> To sell an item for 150 or so Bucks,  on  can not  reasonably expect it
>>> to be  as perfect than another item which sells for 100 grand or more
>>> and nobody
>>>   except a few government institutions can afford it.
>>>
>>> Not every instrument is mad by Agilent for a cost which is prohibitive
>>> to the normal punter.
>>>
>>> Just get back down to earth, a few years ago you had to learn how to
>>> read a map, or follow the often useless instructions somebody else gave
>>> you.
>>>
>>> Now for hardly any money, you get to your destination  with least amount
>>> of effort and a lot saver than before.
>>>
>>> Regards, Horst
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> gonzo-
>>>> "A GPS is a precision device.
>>>>   A Navigator is a consumer device.
>>>>   To confuse the two is to fail to understand either."
>>>>
>>>> A navigator IS a GPS. Surveying GPSs may use carrier phase tracking or
>>>> whatever to get about 2mm accuracy. Just because it is optimized for
>>>> navigation
>>>> instead
>>>>
>>>> of location accuracy and gets about 3m accuracy doesn't mean that a
>>>> navigator
>>>> isn't a GPS.
>>>>
>>>>   Note that map accuracy has nothing to do with GPS receiver accuracy.
>>>> Also
>>>> some mapping data has built in errors or incorrect POIs to identify the
>>>> data in
>>>> case it is copied. For instance, one company's street mapping software I
>>>> owned
>>>> had, in the small town I live in, a POI that said: "***** Institute Of
>>>> Technology"
>>>>
>>>> even though there has never been a school there and it was a actually
>>>> closed gas
>>>>
>>>> station.
>>>>
>>>>                            -Arthur
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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