useful in the car or on the water

I owned a gps III for a few years before deciding on the gpsmap 176c. I mounted the unit on my car dashboard for a road trip to British Columbia and the unit had problems after a week but West Marine replaced the unit without any hassle. I like the color display but in direct sunlight it can be hard to see unless the backlighting is turned on. While in the car I run it off the cigarette lighter cord. The non color model should be easier to see in sunlight. Standalone the unit is small and lightweight and I have carried it around while hiking or in my kayak.

With this unit mounted on the dash, it was easy to access the menus and the maps. The scale of the maps can be changed on the fly by a button push either in or out and was done easily while driving. I generally used the maps with north at the top of the display. The direction of the traveler or car is shown by a small triangle which turns as you turn. Hence you always know what direction you are traveling on the map. While traveling south though it can be a bit confusing.

In use the batteries might last around 7-8 hours which was about the same as my GPS III but of course this unit has a color display and a many more functions. The basemap had good coverage in British Columbia as well as the US.
Note even when this unit is turned off it will eat batteries. When I called garmin about this, they were not helpful as my 1 year warranty had run out. Bottom line if your not using the unit remove the batteries, I suspect some drain is occurring to keep data in memory. When the batteries are removed the trip data is erased.

I called garmin with some questions about getting a data cartridge and bluecharts. First of all you can get by with one or just a couple of blank data cartridges and overlay the information from a bluechart cd. After talking with them though, I found out that there are significant restrictions on the usage of the mapping data. You are allowed to use the maps on a single GPS which they control by the units serial number. If the unit should die they will allow you to change to another unit but only one. Given that a paper chart is forever I was not too happy with this and decided not to buy. Since I expect these units to last 5 or so years over a lifetime one could easily own several of these and having to repurchase the maps every few years is just too much.

One other thing, I didn't understand was the WAAS and later found out that it can take awhile to bring in a WAAS station 30 min to an hour. Impatience made me think this feature was not working in southern calif.

I also tested the data out feature with a simple perl program capturing the data. The data is only output in lat/lon coordinates as I had a client who wanted distance from a grid system, he decided not to purchase this unit. The data out cable connects to a pc via a serial port. Assuming you have some type of mapping software on your pc you can overlay your trip data onto your maps.

Manuals are available online, software updates are available online. Regarding the software updates, download them to your pc and then connect the gps unit with the data cable. A dos window or dos session is used to update the software in the gps. Loss of power while updating the unit could make the gps unusable which would make it necessary to return the unit to the factory. I have made 3 updates to the unit since owning it and have not had any problems.

One feature that is very handy in all the basemap gps' is the bread crumb trail. One time while kayaking in alaska I hid my camp up a rock shelf and then went off kayaking with the gps on. Coming back after a very long day on the water I passed right by the camp without spotting it even though I was looking out for it. After a short distance I could tell I had passed the original departure point and turned back finding the campsite. Probably save hours of searching around.

Overall this unit performs as expected and hopefully the next generation will have better battery life as that is a defining issue for me still as mentioned below I would not be interested in a nonreplaceable battery.

update 16 april 2004 :
Just looking at the 2004 westmarine catalog and there is a new model called the gpsmap 276c From the description the unit now uses compact flash for storage of map data. Second AA batteries are replaced by a lithium ion battery.

update 30 apr 2004
I took my gps on a road trip from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas in Baja California. Generally driving 12 or more hours a day so near sunset I was tired and looking for a place to camp. I did not realize that about mid baja they change to mountain time. Although I knew that the gps displayed time of sunset I became aware that it adjusted the time continously based on lat/lon allowing me to put off finding a campsite until just an hour before sunset.
Also because I did not change my time zone on either my watch or the gps everything was in sync.