Fed up with Garmin device limits

It would be bad programming to keep all routes and activities in RAM... ;)

???

No one said they would keep all the routes and activities in RAM. Since that makes no sense, only a bad programmer would think that’s what people are talking about.

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It’s not clear why these limits exist. They are, however, old (from at least the 800).

The units were never intended as a place to archive activities and an “unlimited” number of courses and activities would be a pain to manage on the device.

So, it seems there would have to some limit anyway.

That there is a limit does mean the device can’t provide better messages/behavior when the limits are reached.

Given how old they are, don’t expect anything about them is going to change.

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These devices are limited and slow computers. They aren’t going to do every thing people might want them to do. That is, something is going to have to be left out. Not many people seem to care about the limit to the number of courses and activities.

There are also some issues (like with navigation) that many more people are likely much more interested in getting fixed over the course/activity limit.

Not sure why we need to defend for Garmin. It's as expensive as a mid-range smart phone yet couldn't save all the routes and activities? What it really means is that Garmin is building the latest flagship on a decade-old "sand castle" OS. It's cheap to build and run (battery, CPU, resources, etc) but couldn't stack too many features, which Garmin is trying very hard to do (yes, good job engineers).

Let's wish Karoo 3 would introduce variants using transflective screen to give Garmin a real run for its money.

A “mid range smart phone” would be bigger and have worse battery life. Unless it was much bigger.

The only companies making money with “mid range smart phones” are Samsung and Apple (and they aren’t just selling mid range phones).

The problem isn’t “cost”. It’s size.

Karoo went with reducing size over battery life (the 2 is smaller).

The Karoo 2 doesn’t have anywhere as good battery life (it appears). 

The Karoo screens seem better than the Garmins. So, no, you won’t see transreflective screens on the Karoos.

It looks like you can only load routes to the Karoo through Hammerhead’s website (you can’t just copy files).

There’s no option to use custom maps on the Karoo.

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The limits on courses/activities isn’t something many people care about. Over their long existence, there are very few complaints about it.

It would be awful to manage an unlimited number of courses and activities on the device. Only a bad programmer would keep ignoring this. 

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Garmin might be stuck with the legacy platform. A rewrite would likely take years to an initial release and take a while to get things working after that (the Karoo is an illustration of that).

They’d still need to support and add features to the current line during the development of a complete replacement.

And, it’s not clear the market would hold up for such an expensive and risky venture. See what happened with the car GPS market.

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s4t1sfy said:

Not sure why we need to defend for Garmin.

It’s not “defending Garmin”. It’s being realistic.

It’s almost certain that Garmin knows much more about building GPS units and selling them than you do.

I have said it numerous times here, the 1040 has a great screen and super great battery life but the basic riding a course software is hopeless and getting worse with every release. I would be greatly happy if the dead simple riding a course with a loaded route & course points  actually worked without the inexplicable stuff up of forcing a half Turn Guidance onto it. And if I could have the1040 course point handling work like it did on my old 520 (after FW 12.1, 6 years ago) I would think I had achieved navarna 

About the Karoo: 

"It looks like you can only load routes to the Karoo through Hammerhead’s website (you can’t just copy files).

There’s no option to use custom maps on the Karoo."

Exactly the reasons why I sold my Karoo. Too much cloud dependant and no free choice of maps. Garmin is much better at that

Being able to use maps from other sources wasn’t Garmin’s plan. 

People managed to figure out the map format years ago. 

Garmin uses a different format (“NT”) on some devices that people haven’t been able to figure out. Fortunately (for users), Garmin didn’t change the format the Edges use (I think they figured that doing so would upset people).

Garmin ended-up “surrendering” by using Openstreetmap (OSM) for map data (just like the providers of the alternative maps mostly do).

I suspect Garmin did that to make things cheaper (maps for the devices used to be an extra purchase) and because OSM had better support for cycling data.

It’s a bit ironic that Garmin’s move to free OSM maps reduces the need for alternative sources.

Karoo also uses OSM data.

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Karoo didn’t seem to consider what people did before their product (which was kind of annoying). I used the old version fairly early  and my impression was that they had never used navigation while cycling. The original unit didn’t make noise (seems like an obvious feature!) and their excuse was that it would be a “dangerous distraction” (which was kind of arrogant). Of course, it’s no longer that (the new model makes noises).

The Karoo still seems pretty nice (now).

But, it doesn’t seem to have “crushed” Garmin, even after 6 or 8 years. Even with issues, the Edges are fairly successful.

I think that Karoo’s relatively “weak” success shows why Garmin won’t create a “modern” (non-legacy) Edge. They would still have to invest in upgrading the current line while developing the replacement. This would take years getting it right and it might not be successful (it would kill the current line and people might move to competitors).

All this in a market that may not be greatly valuable (and, possibly, getting less so).

This is basically why legacy companies can get stuck and get lapped by new companies. (New companies have no choice outside of doing something “modern”.)

I have a Windows computer, and I wrote a simple "robocopy" script to copy all of my Garmin 1040 data and maps to a specific folder on the PC.

Does it remove the files from the Edge after the copy?

I'm not sure there's a reason to copy maps. The maps (courses too) have to come from somewhere else already. They get stale anyway.

Copying the activities (and any other "history" files) makes sense. Note that you can export activities from the Garmin Connect website. If you let your device sync to the website, you are getting backups. (Though, even Garmin's website isn't immune from having serious problems.)

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I wrote a "workbench" program for Windows that makes it a bit more convenient to manage the files on your Edge. (It warns you about the limits too.)

sites.google.com/.../grouteloader