The Garmin 496...a teenager's review

"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

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"

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

Jay,

Stick to running hotels. As a technologist, you're assessment is
embarrassing.

If Sony or MS could translate their game systems to GPS naive, they already
would have done so.

You're starting to sound like those naive folks who think making cars and
making aircraft are so much the same thing.

"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

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

Jay,

Stick to running hotels. As a technologist, you're assessment is
embarrassing.


As someone who was presumably taught the English language at an early age..
"you're"... (??)

Glass houses and all that.

KB

"Matt Barrow" wrote

Stick to running hotels. As a technologist, you're assessment is
embarrassing.

Matt, what the hell is wrong with you lately.

Did someone **** in your Wheaties? Something wrong with your lovelife?

For the past few weeks you have been more obnoxious than usual.

Think about it, and think about toning it down. Everyone will soon be
avoiding you, if you keep it up.
--
Jim in NC

Ok, as a 25 year old "Senior" Mobile Framework engineer with a dozen
mobile games under my belt and an 200mhz ARM reference board I play
around with at work, not to mention 2 years experience with GPS and
Location services, I think I know something about this.

And Jay is right on the money... seriously.

Given capability of the hardware and the maturity of the embedded
platforms at this point, the current crop of avionics (handheld and
otherwise) isn't just substandard, its a downright embarrassment, and
it smacks of _ZERO_ effort on the part of the current producers.

I think you all underestimate the extent to which aviation has
completely fallen off the radar of the younger generation. There is
the sense that it is a dying market, and as a dying market, its not
worth investing in, so the fact that a trivial investment is all
that's needed to break into it doesn't matter. The young tech-dork
generation is all chasing after youTube and Google and social
networking and 'the next big thing'. That's how they'll (we'll) make
our cool hundred million and join the ranks of the Sillicon Valley
elite. A small side business in a 'dying' industry simply isn't what
they're watching.

BTW, the reason I have that embedded board is because of this very
topic... Although I was focusing more on PMA instrumentation
replacement, not handheld GPS's.

On Sat, 07 Jul 2007 06:43:43 -0700, Jay Honeck wrote:

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... --

Refresh rate relates directly to power. Ideally, the box would offer
options (ie. rapid refresh, more power consumption vs. slow refresh,
longer battery life). That may be a "didn't think of it", I suppose, but
I'd be surprised since this is standard in laptops.

But I believe that inertia weighs heavily at Garmin. I asked once whether
they'd ever have the IFR-friendly flight plan entry of the 480 on the
430/530 line. I was told that they'd probably not do this as it was
considered "more difficult".

Another place where having an option (ie. waypoint entry or airway entry)
would be a Good Thing.

Still, I'm suspicious that none of the other vendors have leaped past
Garmin. That suggests that there's a part of this equation I'm missing.
Perhaps the development costs to "get it completely right" would render
the unit too expensive given the small audience?

I presume that all those little game-box things sell well more than
aviation GPS units.

- Andrew

Refresh rate relates directly to power. Ideally, the box would offer
options (ie. rapid refresh, more power consumption vs. slow refresh,
longer battery life). That may be a "didn't think of it", I suppose, but
I'd be surprised since this is standard in laptops.

What's especially sad is that every, single one of the "way cool"
aviation features of the 496 are impacted by this problem. Here's how
it goes:

1. You're cruising along on a 100 mile x-country flight. This is
typical for us.

2. You've got the screen zoomed into the 30 mile range, so that you
can see any details at all (like towers) on the little screen.

3. You want to check the runways at your destination airport, which is
NOT displayed. (Remember, you're zoomed in so that you can see stuff.)
The 496 has the runways stored in its database -- all you have to do
is put your cursor on the desired airport and hit "enter" to see them
all.

4. In order to click on the desired airport, you must "slew" the
cursor off the edge of the screen in order to find it. This means
hold the arrow button down, slew to the edge of the screen -- wait
three seconds while the screen disappears and reappears -- and
continue.

The REALLY bad thing is that the cursor doesn't stop moving when the
screen disappears, so that in those three seconds you can easily WAY
over-shoot your target airport. (I've even ended up in a different
state during the time it's blank.)

5. Repeat ad nauseum.

This process must be performed in order to see ANY of the good stuff,
including accessing the AOPA restaurant/hotel guide, radio
frequencies, field elevation, airport diagrams, METAR and TAF weather
-- you name it, you've got to put your cursor on the airport and push
"enter" to activate it -- which means slewing.

My son just laughed when he first used it...until I told him it cost
$3,000.00.

Then he just laughed at *me*... (Until he figured out that it had come
from his future inheritance...)

;-)

Still, I'm suspicious that none of the other vendors have leaped past
Garmin. That suggests that there's a part of this equation I'm missing.
Perhaps the development costs to "get it completely right" would render
the unit too expensive given the small audience?

Yep, me too. Lowrance -- the world leader in nautical GPS -- has been
"promising" weather for over two years -- and STILL nothing. It must
be a lot harder than we think it is...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 07 Jul 2007 06:43:43 -0700, Jay Honeck wrote:

Refresh rate relates directly to power. Ideally, the box would offer
options (ie. rapid refresh, more power consumption vs. slow refresh,
longer battery life). That may be a "didn't think of it", I suppose, but
I'd be surprised since this is standard in laptops.

But I believe that inertia weighs heavily at Garmin. I asked once whether
they'd ever have the IFR-friendly flight plan entry of the 480 on the
430/530 line. I was told that they'd probably not do this as it was
considered "more difficult".

Another place where having an option (ie. waypoint entry or airway entry)
would be a Good Thing.

Still, I'm suspicious that none of the other vendors have leaped past
Garmin. That suggests that there's a part of this equation I'm missing.
Perhaps the development costs to "get it completely right" would render
the unit too expensive given the small audience?

I presume that all those little game-box things sell well more than
aviation GPS units.

- Andrew



Ahhh!!!! Whatever!!! The modern displays draw a fraction of the power they
did just 3 years ago and the resolution is 2 to 3 time better. Garmin is
using older cheaper displays. If they spent an extra $50-$100 per unit on
better displays of the same size power drain would be less and resolution
would be better. Don't get me started on cpu speed and flash storage very,
very, minimal costs in these units. As for the XM weather it is just a
software program on the unit and the data is available.

http://www.seattleavionics.com has XM weather requires a receiver but it
works.

http://www.xmradio.com/weather/hardw...lutions_av.xmc

I am done for the day laters.