Thursday, August 29, 2013

Changing Of The Guard

So a few weeks back my Garmin started not holding a charge super-well. This has happened in the past & I've blamed it on bad design--there are at least four points of failure in the charging setup--but through trial & error I've learned to be super diligent about double-checking everything & making sure it displays the "charging in progress" message before I walk off and leave it. Lately, though, I've still been picking it up in the afternoons & getting a "low battery" message after less than half an hour. And more recently, within a few minutes of taking it off the charger.


I'm not even kidding; this was after two days of charging.

(And this in addition to those days when it just won't turn on, period. For those of you dealing with the same problem, let me lay this all out Google-search style: "Garmin 305 won't turn on" --> Hold down 'lap' & 'mode' together for 6-8 seconds, then turn on as usual. This has solved the problem every single time I knew for a fact that the unit wasn't dead from lack of charging. Don't ask me why it works. I don't know. Voodoo, probably.)

It's also been taking longer and longer to acquire satellites. It hasn't acquired them in under ten minutes any time in the last month, & in the last two weeks it's refused to acquire them at all.

I say all this to justify the fact that I've been toying with the idea of getting a new Garmin for a while now. I've had this one for nearly four years now, and since I've known plenty of folks who haven't gotten to two years with a single unit, I didn't feel too badly about it. (Plus, I got it on a pretty decent sale to begin with.)

Still. The two main candidates were these guys:

And no matter how dysfunctional the current situation, that is still a metric shitte-tonne of dollars either way you go.

But then I heard from Layla that REI had the 310XT on sale through Labor Day. And when I checked that sweet sale out, I realized I really couldn't afford *NOT* to grab a 310 at that price.

e voilĂ !


You can tell it's mine because that is obviously my backyard picnic table. Obviously.

How much of the win?

*ALL* of the win.

PERHAPS YOU ALSO CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A SWEET SWEET DISCOUNT ON GARMIN 310XT?!?!?!? #justsayin

1 comment:

  1. I am hopelessly behind on everything, but hooray for a new Garmin! I hope it's been everything you hoped, since mine is making me quite happy. I hadn't realized how often I was looking at my old one because it didn't make noise anymore: In last week's marathon, I just had a pleasant surprise every mile when I heard a beep/felt a buzz.

    ReplyDelete