Savannah, GA April 14, 2008
Posted by jim in gps, rants.add a comment
After having spent a little over two days in Savannah, GA, it looks like Cindy and I are going to really like this town. We spent yesterday getting oriented in Savannah by taking one of many tram tours through the historical district. We followed that up by having dinner at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. For those of you who don’t watch Food Network, Uncle Bubba is the brother of Savannah’s most famous cook, Paula Deen. My wife and I split a low country boil which has steamed shrimp, sausage, potatoes, and corn on the cob. The shrimp were absolutely fantastic.
Today was a housekeeping day as we attended to chores. As usual, our gps was absolutely awful. When Garmin can not find a town’s post office or the local Wal-Mart, then you know you’re in trouble. I’ve lost any bashfulness I ever had about asking strangers for directions — it is much easier than relying on my Garmin Nuvi 350 — even with the latest maps and software loaded.
Tomorrow we plan on going back into Savannah.
By the way, after experiencing temperatures in the eighties during the last two months in Florida, it sure has seemed cold here in the Savannah area as temperatures are in the sixties during the day and are forecast to dip into the thirties over the next two nights.
Garmin — they just don’t get customer satisfaction July 8, 2007
Posted by jim in gps, rants.add a comment
Warning — negative rant follows.
After my last post, I started a thread on the Nuvi 350 Yahoo group as well as contacting Garmin. I’m said to say that imho, Garmin does not get customer satisfaction. I’m basing this upon the fact that Garmin’s maps on my just purchased gps are sorely out of date (Garmin tech support says they are at least two years old if I understood the tech correctly). Garmin tech support also told me that Garmin had no control over this since they purchase the maps from a third party.
I was really heartened <mood = sarcasm> when the Garmin tech support person told me that this fall I could purchase a newer version of the maps for $70. Unless something has changed, I’ll assume that the tech’s comment about my version of the maps holds true for this versison — that the information is at least 12 to 24 months old and in some cases older. I’ll also assume that Garmin is copping out regarding the quality since the tech told me that there is nothing that Garmin can do about this since they maps are provided by a third party and Garmin is not responsible for the content.
In my opinion there appears to be opportunities here for some other vendor to assume leadership of this market by providing more up to date and accurate maps; and by assuming responsibility for the maps.
End of negative rant; end of posts about Garmin since I can’t seem to find a lot nice to say about them.
Garmin Nuvi 350 — Bad First Impression June 29, 2007
Posted by jim in Geeky stuff, RV, gps, rants.add a comment
One of many decisions my wife and I made when we decided to become fulltime RVers was to purchase a gps unit. I have been reading several blogs and made a decision to purchase a Garmin Nuvi 350 when the time was right. That time happened last week as we were getting ready to go to Chicago. After remembering our nightmare of getting around in Chicago during a trip last year, we decided to purchase the Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS at a local Wal-Mart. I had decided upon this unit based upon reviews of the Garmin unit that praised the superior windshield mount and best routing software.
All I can say is if this is the best the industry has, I’ll wait until Apple develops an iGPS unit before I buy another one. The windshield mount just isn’t going to work. I’m either going to superglue it to the windshield or find another mounting option. (BTW, the optional mounting disk is useless — it just won’t stick any where on my wife’s Dodge Ram truck’s dashboard.) The maps are so full of errors that I sincerely hope that no one has to use these for anything important. The maps had our hotel as well as two adjacent hotels and a shopping mall misplaced. It told us to take an Interstate North when the map directed us to the Interstate South. The maps had towns on the wrong side of the road and street names that did not correspond to actual signage (for example, Park Street on street signs showed up as 37th street on the map).
I do wish that the people doing the reviews would try out these units out in the wild – especially in smaller cities and in the countryside. I realize that keeping maps updated is a huge undertaking, but as GPS units proliferate, I’m certain that the units with the most accurate maps will seize the biggest market share. From what I’ve seen from my first trip with the Garmin Nuvi, Garmin will not be that market leader.
Google Pages Problem June 29, 2006
Posted by jim in Geeky stuff, rants.add a comment
Has any one else had any problems accessing Google Page Creator? I keep on getting the following:
Google Page Creator is having a little trouble right now.
This is not because of anything you did; it’s just a little hiccup in our system that will hopefully go away soon. We apologize for the inconvenience, and recommend you try reloading this page.
I’ve tried it with IE and with Firefox with the same results. If you’ve figured out a way to fix this, let me know. I’m a big fan of Google software and it just aggrevates me that I can’t even try this out.
Google Desktop Search — R.I.P. March 7, 2006
Posted by jim in Geeky stuff, rants.add a comment
I loved google desktop search (gds). It saved me many times when I tried to find something either on my hard drive or in my mailbox.
Unfortunately, my company decided that the latest version was a threat to company information and has banned its use.
From what I’ve read, I understand my company’s stand against the normal version of gds, but google has provided an enterprise version that seems to remediate the privacy issues that rightfully concern my company. Unfortunately, it appers to me that my employer seems to think that desktop search is one of those fads that will not last. (I seem to remember the powers that be saying the same thing about the internet about ten years ago.)
So, I’ve uninstalled my friend (gds) and have now installed yahoo’s desktop search software. So far, I haven’t needed to really exercise the software, so I don’t have any opinions regarding the value of Yahoo’s software versus gds.
RANT — drm on the d#@$ed CD October 8, 2005
Posted by jim in music, rants.add a comment
Today I received the latest additions to my music collection in the mail — 3 cd’s. Normally, I download my music from Itunes, but I had some unused Circuit City gift cards, so I thought I’d use my Circuit City dollars on my music.
All was well until I inserted the last cd and up opened a dialog box that basically said that I had to install software on my computer in order to play and/or copy the music to my hard drive. I went ahead and installed the software only to find out that I could only copy the music in either Sony’s proprietary format or DRM protected WMA format.
I’m not certain why a musician or a company like Sony was thinking doing this. They’re antagonizing what I would think is a significant part of the music market — those of us who own Ipods and use Apple’s Itunes software.
SONY — this is one customer that you and your musicians will not be seeing again. I will not purchase your music ever again. If I can’t get Sony’s music onto my Ipod the same as every other label’s music, you’ve lost me. It looks like Sony didn’t learn anything from the Betamax/VHS wars several decades ago.
