Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-10 of 10 | | « PREV | | |
 Frustration and success August 3, 2005
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I started to give this thing 1 star, but I realized that it's not the cable's fault that Microsoft Windows is annoying. The cable is what it is, and once you have a free serial port, it works fabulously.
That said, it may be a huge frustration to free up a serial port if Windows says it is "busy." If you have a Palm, a Windows CE device, some other PDA, a camera, or anything else that connects or has ever connected to your serial port, you may have to go through your whole computer looking for software and hardware that is 'using' that connection, before this will work.
Once I convinced Windows that nothing else was using the serial port, I have been able to connect my eTrex to everything I needed: Garmin upgrade software, Easy GPS, Geocacher's Swiss Army Knife, and Google Earth. Being as this is your only PC interface cabling choice when you have an eTrex, it's great that it works, and it's important that we all acknowledge that it does work. But in this case, three stars is like a C grade in school: "OK, it just exactly/barely meets expectations."
It would get 5 stars if it was an eTrex-to-USB cable -- but then Garmin would not make another chunk of cash by selling the serial-to-USB adapters required to attach these GPS units to laptops & other computers where a serial connection is not possible.
 Try to find a port September 19, 2003
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I own a Sony VAIO computer. In the computer, there are no ports to put in this cord. Ended up buying something for [money] to convert it to a USB connection. Then, I couldn't find a program that would be able to send and receive data to my eTrex GPS via a USB port. Was definitely a hassle.
Excelent for Portables. June 17, 2001
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The cable doesn't come with any software, but is great for upgrading the software on your eTrek(avilable from Garmin's website) You will need a GPS compatible mapping program to get the full advantage. The cable connects very securly to the GPS, and is plenty long enough.
Expensive, but a cable is necessary June 15, 2001
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This little cable is very, very overpriced, but unfortunately, for those of you that own the original eTrex or any eTrex model with no cable, you'll want to own this or an equivalent so you can download the latest updates to your GPS receiver from garmin and load them onto the unit. And you want this ability because Garmin does a good job of fixing bugs and adding new little software features. But if you can't build your own cable, then you should grab one of these...
Good quality, but get the data+power cable... January 11, 2001
34 out of 37 found this review helpful
The quality of this cable is fine, but it doesn't give you access to the power pins that are in the Garmin interface. Get the cable that does power and data instead... or if you're a hardware geek, then make your own with the stuff from purple open projects (pfranc.com)
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