Garmin 800 Any point

[dodgy]

Righto Tim! Oh and someone either here or Bikeradar, can't remember which said that wiping the screen of rain would cause problems. Actually, when you do wipe the screen as if to clear rain, nothing is detected by the Edge, it's only finger points/prods that are picked up. And that's not how you clear a screen of rain

 

[Tim Bennet.]

In all seriousness, I do appreciate people's real life reporting on bits of kit!

 

[yello]

In all seriousness, I do appreciate people's real life reporting on bits of kit!

Me too.

The journalist reviews for mags are understandably of the 'take it out the box and use it once' type. And that use can sometimes be by someone who doesn't really have a need for said product or any particular idea on how to use it or what to use it for. They are useful reviews but limited.

Much more useful imo (and much rarer sadly) is the long term review by someone that has a real world use for the product and so is much more likely to test the product to it's fullest.

I'm sure our resident 800 owners will do just that for us!

 

[dodgy]

OK, you've convinced me yello and Tim. I've put some initial thoughts here and will try and improve it with more content and pictures soon http://www.velorider.co.uk/wp02/?p=282

 

[jonny jeez]

I notice that Garmin are promoting their 800 bike nav. I was toying with the idea of getting a bike nav nut i can't seem to justify it. the question that keeps coming back to me is "what's the point" I know the routes I ride on locally and I'm not planning any rides through the Gobi desert any time soon. i like gadgets though i must admit. If I bought one I'm worried I might get bored with it after a short time. Does anyone have one? If so what do you think? Are they worth it.

Then there is no point, that's the point.

Spend your money on something you need, rather than something you're being sold

 

[ianrauk]

Nice one Dodgy, cheers for the review.

 

[400bhp]

OK, you've convinced me yello and Tim. I've put some initial thoughts here and will try and improve it with more content and pictures soon http://www.velorider.co.uk/wp02/?p=282

Looks good. Perhaps would cost me £100 to upgrade from a 705...

You say: "The Edge 800 does away with the .tcx and .gpx files of old (though you can still navigate by .gpx if you put them in the ‘new files’ folder on the device), the new .fit files are tiny, probably 45KB rather than 450KB, consequently they are quicker to transfer into something like SportTracks and you are very unlikely to run out of storage space (not that that was a problem with the 705 either)."

Where do you get .fit files from? Can these be created in free mapping software like Bikeroutetoaster?

 

[dodgy]

Well I'm new to this, but I discovered if you send a route from something like Mapsource, the Edge itself converts the mapsource sent file into a .fit file on the device. I assume the same happens if you use something like ridewithgps.com or the many other web-based route sites.

So it seems that the 800 is backwards compatible.

 

[Bollo]

Is the .fit format xml? With that sort of file size reduction, I'm guessing that they've gone over to a bespoke binary format. I'd hope there's two-way some conversion available. To lose the xml altogether would be a pity, because the old formats could easily be played with in excel or with a bit of coding - for example I've used it on the odd occasion to plot more obscure graphs such as cadence vs incline.

 

[dodgy]

I don't think it's binary, more info here http://pub.ks-and-ks.ne.jp/cycling/edge500_fit.shtml

SportTracks can import the .fit files no problem.

 

[Bollo]

I don't think it's binary, more info here http://pub.ks-and-ks...ge500_fit.shtml

SportTracks can import the .fit files no problem.

Thanks for that dodg. It IS binary but that link document seems to give the byte structure and a perl converter. Just a bit more of a pfaff to play with, that's all.

 

[dodgy]

Aha, got you I should have looked closer, I saw the tables of text and assumed too much

 

[Bollo]

Aha, got you I should have looked closer, I saw the tables of text and assumed too much

No worries, I had to look twice myself.

I was always a little surprised that the 705 (and other garmin gadgets) used xml directly as a storage format rather than binary, given the limited space some of them might have.