ajft

Sadly, although a GPS can tell where it is, it can't tell you where it is if you haven't got it... Stupidly I think I left mine lying on the ground next to the bike when I was leaving work one day this week. The usual routine is to walk outside, turn on the Edge, place the Edge on the top of the sign next to the bike, unlock the bike, put on my helmet and gloves, pick up the Edge and ride off. Since the Edge isn't at home, and isn't at work, and doesn't seem to be in any of my myriad pockets and bags, I'm assuming that I missed that vitally important second-last step and left it sitting on top of the sign outside building 28.

Annoyed that I haven't got it, but over the years it seemed to cause more headaches than it solved; eternally crap USB software, data that seemed to always be half held hostage by Garmin and/or Motionbased, dodgy hardware, faulty buttons, misleading warranty conditions. The amusing thing is that only last week I'd finally managed to convince Garmin that there was a problem with the timezones since they still don't cater for the new Australian daylight savings time!

March 23, 2006 to October 23, 2008, I'd only had it three days when I hit the first of many faults. Thirty-one months, $506.30, one replacement unit at ten months, a second replacement due at another ten months only I found that the warranty wouldn't cover me! I guess that's $16 per month for the fun of tracking most of my bike rides.

Anyway, if you happen to find a Garmin Edge 305 kicking around in a second-hand store or garage sale, serial #37465581, its mine and I guess I wouldn't mind it back.

Thread: last next

Now that definitely leaves a bad taste in the mouth Mr Garmin.

You purchase a GPS in good faith, one that comes with a 12 month warranty and so when it breaks you send it back to be repaired. You can't send it to Garmin since they don't have a presence in Australia, instead you have to send it to GME, who are the “sole repair and distribution centre.”

When it comes back you assume that the replacement one has a warranty, then nine or ten months later that one breaks too... that's when you discover that according to GME “they're not real reliable,” but since its a repair unit it only has a 3 month warranty and it'll cost you $AU209 to have your unrepairable GPS replaced! Staff at GME claim to be "only a repair shop" and that I have to discuss it with "Garmin Australia" if I'm not happy with the warranty, or that fact that two out of two Garmin devices have failed in under a year.

Searching about shows that there is no such entity as "Garmin Australia", all references to a Garmin presence in Australia are directed straight back to GME! Garmin's "international office" in the US won't help, since I'm not in the US, and helpfully directed me to contact Garmin South-East Asia, which have a website in Taiwan that is solely in Chinese characters.

So two years of endless firmware hangs and two broken Edge 305 GPSs can be summarised as: nice concept, crap product, crap firmware, crap warranty and crap support.

Thanks Garmin.

Thread: last next

I'd love to believe that Garmin's Edge 305 is a great piece of equipment, but unfortunately my experiences with the device — two so far — have left me unconvinced.

From day one it has been subject to battery draining hangs if you don't switch it off and disconnect it from the PC in precisely the right order, and even then sometimes it'll just hang. You get into the habit of switching off, unplugging, then switching it back on briefly just to check. A number of firmware updates haven't cured the problem, perhaps lessening the frequency though. Its the only USB device I've ever heard of that has this problem.

Another design flaw seems to be a loose mounting bracket and a mount almost at one end — it always seemed wobbly and eventually my first one fell out when I hit a bump and smashed the display. Just under ten months life for that one.

Four weeks later I received a replacement, still subject to the software hangs.

Nearly ten months into the life of the second unit, in early December 2007, and I noticed that one of the buttons didn't work anymore, but I don't tend to use the up/down arrows so I've no idea how long that was the case, then a few weeks later it started to randomly turn itself off if I hit a bump in the road. I resisted sending it back to GME until after the Alpine Classic in late January, then today posted it off for repair or replacement.

Now the wait, hopefully not another four weeks, until I get it back. A dodgy product or just bad luck and two bad items?

Updated: Ah damn, I guess I should have read all the data off it before I shipped it off, I think it unlikely that they'll send it back with the memory still full, especially if it gets replaced. Oh no, I've lost all records of my commutes since Feb. 8!

Thread: last next

Seems that May is bike month in America, not only that, but in Motionbased's blog I get a mention as one of the two runners up for logging the most number of "commute" bike rides for the year. Hardly record breaking distances with my 5km ride, but there would have been another month's worth of entries if the Edge 305 hadn't been off being repaired for all of January!

Interesting that the second, wamble, and third, ajft (me), are both Australian, while number one, mallfellow is in the US.

Fun and games over the weekend attempting to get the Motionbased software working on the home laptop. Minor problem is that the laptop is running¹ Windows Vista, major problem is that http://www.motionbased.com is almost unusably slow.

Downloaded two updates, but had to leave prior to installing them:

MBAgentInstall_release_2.3.0.1.exe

Existing version 2.3.0.0

Garmin-USBDrivers_221.exe

Existing version is 2.2.0

I managed to read data from the Edge 305 and upload it, but couldn't login to the website, either the password is wrong or its just timing out.

---

1. Of all the verbs in the English language, "running" doesn't quite seem appropriate when applied to the speed of Vista; I think I'd prefer anything from the following list: walking, crawling, meandering, dawdling....

Thread: last next

A courier arrived this morning and brought me a shiny new replacement Edge 305 GPS to replace the one that broke back in January.

At one month and one day Garmin are twice as responsive as Canon for repairs — last year's warranty headache — but I'm still not really impressed that it takes that long for them to send a replacement unit, I would have thought they would keep them in stock. Apparently not, I was told that they order them in when a faulty one comes in for repair. I'll be keeping track of the dates since I'm fairly sure that Australian law says I get my warranty period extended if I'm without it for more than a week. Here's hoping I don't need the warranty though!

All excited at the new arrival, I powered it on, got it synchronised with the satellites, then put it in my pocket and rode to work — no replacement mounting bracket was sent. Unfortunately I was too excited, forgetting that unlike a normal bike speedometer I was supposed to press the Start button, so when I got to work I discovered that I had travelled exactly zero (duh!) miles (ugh!). At least I've set it up now so that it reads in metric like the rest of the civilised world.

Another phone call to GME and I can get a replacement bracket, but I have to post in the damaged one. They'll also find out if I can buy a third one to put on the third bicycle....

Thread: last next