DodgyGeeSer said:
...However, if they received enough requests/feedback they could potentially give it more serious consideration ...
I suspect that is your personal opinion, DodgyGeeSer, and a veiled suggestion from you that others to write Garmin, not Garmin's position on the matter. So, before anyone starts clicking links and sending out letters, consider this:
I've been using the POI loader for a while now, during the testing that I have been doing for motorcycle use of the 2720. It's a pretty simple, straightforward program - you provide it with a list of lat/longs on your computer, in text or Excel (.csv) format, and it sucks them up into your GPSR. Simple, fast, to the point. If you attach a speed value to a lat/long, it will alert you if you are over that speed (or, maybe it displays the speed when you get close to the location - I can't remember exactly).
As for the whole business of giving earlier model GPSRs the ability to store proximity waypoints - I really, really doubt if this will be possible. Garmin has always been very good about porting new features back to existing models
if the existing model hardware can handle the new feature. We've all seen this in the past with things like the custom routing preferences, and 'avoid area' features.
The problem, though, is this: The existing unit needs to have both the processor capacity (horsepower) and the free DRAM memory capacity to handle the new feature. In the case of proximity waypoints, the problem is going to be finding the free memory to both handle the storage of the proximity waypoints, and finding the processor cycles needed to constantly monitor for upcoming proximity waypoints. Personally, I don't think ANY of the existing products will be capable of handling this. It's an engineering issue, not a marketing issue.
A good example of this is the issue of giving a SP III the ability to handle custom route preferences (major roads, minor roads, etc.). The SP III could handle this from a DRAM point of view (the new feature did not require any additional DRAM to function), but the SP III just doesn't have the processor horsepower to cope with the additional workload. If the engineers had rolled this feature into a SP III, the performance of the SP III would be unacceptable to the user. So, they didn't. But, they did roll it into future updates for the 276, 296, and a few other existing GPSRs of similar vintage, after having first introduced the feature on the 26xx series.
In the case of the 26xx series of GPSRs and proximity waypoints, I think that the 26xx units probably have the processor horsepower to handle proximity waypoints, but I doubt if they have sufficient dynamic RAM inside them to store the proximity waypoints. This means it just ain't gonna be possible to provide the feature. Do keep in mind that the 26xx series hardware configuration was frozen back in the winter of 2002/2003 - that's a heck of a long time ago. DRAM prices have dropped considerably since then, allowing the hardware guys to pack more DRAM into the GPSRs, thus allowing the software guys the room they need to pack more features and tricks into the GPSR.
An excellent analogy would be personal computers: If you are running Windows 2000 on a 386 or a 486, and you try to install the latest Windows Media Player 10, the application installer won't even run. Microsoft isn't trying to force you to upgrade your operating system or your hardware, they're just facing the facts that the old OS and the old hardware don't meet the technical prerequsites needed to support the new feature set.
A GPSR is like a computer: You buy the thing, and it will work perfectly with the software that it ships with until it crumbles into dust 100 years from now. But, if you want to have all the latest tricks, and run the latest software, you have to have hardware (memory and processor) that can support the tricks - computer or GPSR, it's the same for both.
Michael
