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.

"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!

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"

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

Hell, forget Iphone, pick any mobile phone released in the last 5
years, they're all running 120-400 mhz Arm Chips, which any decent
programmer worth their salt should be able to make sing.

I'm a mobile software engineer... And I can assure you that what you
guys are seeing is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of what
these boards are capable of- hell, we give our mainline game
programmers three days to do the menus of their games, and the stuff
they come up with wipes the floor with what I've seen from most
handheld avionics. To me it just smacks of pure lack of will, they
take the basic, designed-in-one-hour engineering interface and pass it
off as a consumer product because they know they can.

I'm a mobile software engineer... And I can assure you that what you
guys are seeing is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of what
these boards are capable of- hell, we give our mainline game
programmers three days to do the menus of their games, and the stuff
they come up with wipes the floor with what I've seen from most
handheld avionics. To me it just smacks of pure lack of will, they
take the basic, designed-in-one-hour engineering interface and pass it
off as a consumer product because they know they can.

THANK YOU! I'm glad my son and I aren't the only ones who see this.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

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

Hell, forget Iphone, pick any mobile phone released in the last 5
years, they're all running 120-400 mhz Arm Chips, which any decent
programmer worth their salt should be able to make sing.

I'm a mobile software engineer... And I can assure you that what you
guys are seeing is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of what
these boards are capable of- hell, we give our mainline game
programmers three days to do the menus of their games, and the stuff
they come up with wipes the floor with what I've seen from most
handheld avionics. To me it just smacks of pure lack of will, they
take the basic, designed-in-one-hour engineering interface and pass it
off as a consumer product because they know they can.

They are systems are under utilized for one reason, dependability.I have to
restart my Razor at least once a day and it will, at least twice a week,
just shut down on it own.

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}

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...)