The Garmin 496...a teenager's review

Now that my son is taking flight lessons, I'm letting him fly in
(Read: Mary is relinquishing) the front seat more often. This plants
him squarely in front of our panel-docked Garmin 496, the latest-and-
greatest portable GPS from Garmin.

We've flown behind this unit since OSH '06, and he has heard us
discussing its quirks and limitations, but he's never had any first-
hand experience programming it. Remember, the boy is 16 years old,
and has almost literally grown up with a Playstation/X-Box/PC game
controller in his hands. His thumbs are highly over-developed, from
10 million hours of video-game playing, and he is turning into an
absolute whiz with computers.

In short, he is an expert on all things that use graphics.

After working the 496 for a few flights, with all of its bizarre
hiccups (I.E.: The screen completely disappears when you slew the
cursor across the screen) and horrible graphics (displayed on a
postage-stamp-sized screen), his priceless comment was:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

And you know what? He's absolutely right. We pilots were so
desperate for in-cockpit weather that we willingly paid $3000 (!) for
a $250 dollar unit that performs worse than a video game.

BTW: If you've never played with an X-Box, or a Sony Playstation game
platform, this post won't make any sense to you -- which is precisely
what Garmin was counting on. Go out and borrow your kids (or grand-
kids) game unit for a couple of hours, and see what REAL graphics
capability looks like. (And if you want to see how hand-held
graphical displays *should* perform, borrow their PSP handheld
Playstation unit.)

I sure hope Garmin steps up to the plate, performance-wise, with their
(much anticipated) new product at OSH...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

But they have very few engineering requirements in common:

One has to run on batteries as long as possible (i.e. low power draw),
include radio receivers, be as small as reasonably possible, and must come
with its own display.

The other can draw as much power as it needs, has no physical size
constraints on human interfaces, and requires an external display that must
be supplied by the user.

The closest comparable consumer products with equivalent engineering
requirements that comes to my mind is the just-released iPhone and
notebook/tablet computers.

On 7/6/2007 2:19:49 PM, Jay Honeck wrote:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

It appears MS may have. From C|Net's news:

"Microsoft to extend Xbox 360 warranty, take $1 billion hit"
http://tinyurl.com/2x98ov

--
Peter

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
After working the 496 for a few flights, with all of its bizarre
hiccups (I.E.: The screen completely disappears when you slew the
cursor across the screen) and horrible graphics (displayed on a
postage-stamp-sized screen), his priceless comment was:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

And if Garmin was as reliable as Microsoft, the majority of the pilot
population would be dead right now! :~}


And you know what? He's absolutely right. We pilots were so
desperate for in-cockpit weather that we willingly paid $3000 (!) for
a $250 dollar unit that performs worse than a video game.

Well, Jay, why don't you lug a X-Box and a 27" TV around with you in the
cockpit? :~)

{titter}

"Jay Honeck" wrote:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."


Apples to watermelons.


--
Dan
T-182T at BFM

On Jul 6, 2:49 pm, "Matt Barrow" wrote:
And if Garmin was as reliable as Microsoft, the majority of the pilot
population would be dead right now! :~}

:-) Hysterical!!! (and so true...)

Jay Honeck wrote:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

Actually, I've tried GPS and EFB applications on one
of MS' platforms - the Samsung Q1 - which has a whole
lot more computing power than the 496, and it's a dog.

I sure hope Garmin steps up to the plate, performance-wise, with their
(much anticipated) new product at OSH...

Didn't they with the 496 ? Isn't that the only difference
from the 396 ? (plus maybe traffic)

Road Dog wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

Actually, I've tried GPS and EFB applications on one
of MS' platforms - the Samsung Q1 - which has a whole
lot more computing power than the 496, and it's a dog.

Or more correctly put, the software that I used was a dog. I hear folks
blaming the hardware and the .NET framework continually when it really is a
application software problem. With care, attention, and good design, we
have our product running just great on a Smartphone, using .NET, on a 200MHz
CPU using an SD card transfering 1-bit at a time and we are able to access
any approach in the US in about one second. Anyway, I just wanted to ensure
that the blame was correctly directed.

Hilton

Jay,

That's not really a review, it's a comment. Please get you son to describe
what he would change (and why) etc etc and either post it here or email it
to me (hilton[at]hiltonsoftware[dot]com). We're always looking at ways of
improving WingX's usability.

Thanks,

Hilton
P.S.: Yeah, I know, any semi-smart spamming system should be able to figure
out my email address.

On Jul 6, 11:19 am, Jay Honeck wrote:
Now that my son is taking flight lessons, I'm letting him fly in
(Read: Mary is relinquishing) the front seat more often. This plants
him squarely in front of our panel-docked Garmin 496, the latest-and-
greatest portable GPS from Garmin.

We've flown behind this unit since OSH '06, and he has heard us
discussing its quirks and limitations, but he's never had any first-
hand experience programming it. Remember, the boy is 16 years old,
and has almost literally grown up with a Playstation/X-Box/PC game
controller in his hands. His thumbs are highly over-developed, from
10 million hours of video-game playing, and he is turning into an
absolute whiz with computers.

In short, he is an expert on all things that use graphics.

After working the 496 for a few flights, with all of its bizarre
hiccups (I.E.: The screen completely disappears when you slew the
cursor across the screen) and horrible graphics (displayed on a
postage-stamp-sized screen), his priceless comment was:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

And you know what? He's absolutely right. We pilots were so
desperate for in-cockpit weather that we willingly paid $3000 (!) for
a $250 dollar unit that performs worse than a video game.

BTW: If you've never played with an X-Box, or a Sony Playstation game
platform, this post won't make any sense to you -- which is precisely
what Garmin was counting on. Go out and borrow your kids (or grand-
kids) game unit for a couple of hours, and see what REAL graphics
capability looks like. (And if you want to see how hand-held
graphical displays *should* perform, borrow their PSP handheld
Playstation unit.)

I sure hope Garmin steps up to the plate, performance-wise, with their
(much anticipated) new product at OSH...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I agree. When it comes to UI design, aviation products just do not
stack up. It's not just GPS units either; I've bought flight sim
addons that had the most idiotic way of installing. I've seen many
PAYWARE logbook/weather/planning applications that seemed like they
were written for Windows 3.1

I have about 500 hours in GNS430 planes, and one thing that ****es me
off, is the slowness of it. I press a button, and theres a slight
delay before the unit accepts the input. It just makes it feel slow
and sluggish. I had a graphing calculator in college that costs 1/10
the price, was less powerful, and still wasn't nearly as slow.