The Garmin 496...a teenager's review

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

You mean like this....

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/...g-of-Death/p1/

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
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"


Hummmm.... I think I said something like this in the 596 thread that a
Korean knock off would be faster and better quality hahahahaha... Garmin is
banking on a Name not quality. Some say they are the leader in GPS
technology they may be but they will fail if they keep using poor quality
parts and 5+ year old technology in their displays. I can hand solder SMT
devices better then what they do on the inside of their devices.

The CPU speed in my cell phone is faster then that of the G1000 no telling
what they are using in the 496. So anyone have about $90K they want to toss
to the Korea/HongKong to reverse engineer the 496 and then make it better
and knock them off for only a few hundred dollars? Hell I could crack/dump
their their os in a few days and would give me an excuse to get my SMT
rework / device programming equipment out of the attic.

"NW_Pilot" wrote:


The CPU speed in my cell phone is faster then that of the G1000 no telling
what they are using in the 496. So anyone have about $90K they want to toss
to the Korea/HongKong to reverse engineer the 496 and then make it better
and knock them off for only a few hundred dollars? Hell I could crack/dump
their their os in a few days and would give me an excuse to get my SMT
rework / device programming equipment out of the attic.


It's amazing that you're the only one to think of this. Congratulations!

I expect to see your $300 Garmin beater at OSH next year!

--
Dan

"Don't make me nervous when I'm carryin' a baseball bat."
- Big Joe Turner

"Hilton" wrote in message
. net...
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



Agreed. .NET is not to blame but it is an enabler. Like JAVA and other
quick-to-build platforms. One can create very good applications that are
reliable, quick user response, etc. But, the race to market is, apparently,
overwhelmingly tempting. The result is bulky applications that are rid with
bugs.

Comparing the Garmin 496 to a household video game is not fair. As someone
posted - apples to watermelons. The problem with comparing it to something
like the PSP is that there is a huge difference in market. Garmin could have
created a fantastic device that was priced beyond reason. Every development
effort must find the balance between features, response time, and quality.

That's what the next generation is for.
--
-------------------------------
Travis
Lake N3094P
PWK

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
Jay Honeck wrote:
The closest comparable consumer products with equivalent engineering
requirements that comes to my mind is the just-released iPhone

Which has also received a bagging in all the reviews I've heard, due to
outdated operating systems and the like.
Crash Lander
--
http://straightandlevel1973.spaces.live.com/
I'm not always right,
But I'm never wrong!

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
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.

[ snip]

His comments are on the money.

Of course the problems a
certification and development cost.
Real Estate space ( how big/bulky do you want you hand held) (How much panel
space are you wanting to give up)
I'd like to see a way to display the output on a larger yoke mounted
display.
The user interface is terrible on all GPS units I've seen or read about.
And ,of course, are the units sellin? They are then why change a good thing?

Hilton wrote:

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.

I placed the blame exactly where I meant it: Windows XP. The POS
takes nearly 2 minutes just to start up and leaves about 1MB for
applications to swap pages in and out of. Not very helpful when
you're trying to look at, scroll and zoom large maps.

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.

That's why I mentioned the Sony PSP. Google it -- it's basically a
496-sized game platform.

Put a moving map GPS on THAT screen, and we'll all have something to
crow about. Add weather, and Garmin will fade to black.

Won't happen, of course. But hey, I can dream.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

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

Apples to watermelons.


Okay, I'll give you the X-Box vs Garmin comparison is wrong. Which is
why I mentioned the Sony PSP handheld.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

It's amazing that you're the only one to think of this. Congratulations!

Look around at the demographic of pilots nowadays. I'm 48, and I'm
still considered the "Young Guy" at the airport -- which is the reason
so few pilots apparently grasp how truly clunky the 496 is to use.
Garmin is not dealing with a generation that has grown up with a mouse
in our hands, and most pilots have nothing to compare the 496 against.

My son does. And his observations were right on the money.

And, quite frankly, Garmin is still the only "all-in-one-box" weather
option. As long as Lowrance and AvMap continue to sit on their hands
regarding weather, Garmin has little incentive to improve.

Trouble is, weather is so important that many of us (me included) have
been willing to put up with almost ANY performance in order to get it
in the panel. XM weather has changed flying so dramatically for us
that I'd be willing to use a stone tablet in order to get it whilst
airborne. But it really took a 16-year-old's perspective to make it
clear exactly how slow the unit really is.

Sadly, now that my unit is panel docked, I'm pretty much married to
the display size, so I hope Garmin leaves that unchanged. (Even
though I would LOVE a bigger screen.) And I don't find the user
interface to be bad at all -- in fact, I love it. They got that
right, IMHO.

But I truly hope they eventually do something about the screen refresh
rate, cuz all of us -- Mary, me, and now Joe -- want to punch the
panel while we're waiting for that stupid screen to refresh after
slewing the cursor to the next METAR reporting station...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"