GPS Question: What to buy

The "lock to roads feature " can be turned on or off and remembers your
preference in each mode (Aviation, Land, Water). The 196 is an awesome unit.
Wayne


"TripFarmer" wrote in message
...
For $500 this looks like a decent GPS. I've always been a Garmin owner
and was
considering a 196 but the "Lock to Road" feature turns me off. The PDA
based
GPS systems look ok, too.

In article ,
Wayne wrote:
The "lock to roads feature " can be turned on or off and remembers your
preference in each mode (Aviation, Land, Water). The 196 is an awesome unit.

Sorry, but this is only partly true:

The "lock to roads feature" can be turned on or off, but it does
NOT remember the "off" preference: in land mode it gets turn on
automatically as a side-effect of a mode change, a "go to", a route
selection, and many other key-press-seqences which seem unrelated
to this "feature" (like merily switching it on and off). In aviation
mode I have observed it to be turned on for no obvious reason
several times. In marine mode I've not yet seen it turned on, but
I hardly ever use it in this mode, so I don't know how it behaves
here..

I agree that it is a great unit, but having to check (and sometimes
reset) "lock to road" in aviation mode every time after switch-on
is silly. Actually I think it's silly that "lock to road" is present
(and can be silently working!) in aviation and water mode.

-- ted

Ted Lindgreen wrote:
In article ,
Wayne wrote:

The "lock to roads feature " can be turned on or off and remembers your
preference in each mode (Aviation, Land, Water). The 196 is an awesome unit.


Sorry, but this is only partly true:

The "lock to roads feature" can be turned on or off, but it does
NOT remember the "off" preference: in land mode it gets turn on
automatically as a side-effect of a mode change, a "go to", a route
selection, and many other key-press-seqences which seem unrelated
to this "feature" (like merily switching it on and off). In aviation
mode I have observed it to be turned on for no obvious reason
several times. In marine mode I've not yet seen it turned on, but
I hardly ever use it in this mode, so I don't know how it behaves
here..

I agree that it is a great unit, but having to check (and sometimes
reset) "lock to road" in aviation mode every time after switch-on
is silly. Actually I think it's silly that "lock to road" is present
(and can be silently working!) in aviation and water mode.


Yours seems to be the only unit with that problem. Maybe you ought to send your
unit in to Garmin and tell them to fix it.