DreamLink's Full Review: Magellan Meridian Gold Handheld GPS Receiver
I wanted a hand held GPS for hiking, camping, boating and traveling. I sorted through quite a few other GPS units before making a decision to buy the Meridian Gold by Magellan.
I made this decision based on limited funds, larger display screen than other comparable GPS’s, and the fact this one has marine features, floats, waterproof to 3 feet and can be connected to a computer via a serial cable to the MapSend software.
Where I may have saved a few dollars in the original purchase of the unit I lost in the end because I had to buy ad-ons to get all the features I wanted. It cost me just over $110.00 for the lakes southeast in order to get the lakes I wanted. I downloaded this map file from their website. The map file must have the S/N of the GPS unit that it will be used in or it will not work. Meaning if you loose or replace the original unit the map file will not work in a second unit. If you buy a second GPS you must also buy another map file.
At this point I had bought the GPS for $199.00 and spent another $110 for the lakes southeast file. In order to use this lake file I had to buy an SD memory chip that fits under the batteries in the back. At that time the chip alone cost around $100 for a 512 chip. Now I had around $400 tied up in a hand held GPS unit.
Traveling around the country as we do sometimes I needed accurate street maps for the GPS and in order to get them I was once again required to buy software. The Magellan Map Send software is designed to work with the GPSs made by Magellan. I think I paid around $120 for that software at that time. After I got it I soon discovered I couldn’t use the software with the unit because it was serial software and I had no serial connections with any of my newer computers. Now I had about $530.00 in this unit and still couldn’t use the maps or map software.
I went to Best Buy and told them of my problem and they recommended a USB to serial adapter, which I bought for I think around $20 and took it home. After several brain busting hours my wife and I gave up trying to make the adapter work and took it back to the Best Buy Geek Squad to have them fix it. We ended up returning that USB adapter and buying a different one then letting the Geek Squad set up the adapter for us. Now we are running around $550.00 in this GPS and several trips across the city for help. All of a sudden I realized what I thought had been a good deal for a GPS wasn’t such a good deal anymore.
Using the software required a setup for the hand held unit but after that it seemed fairly easy. The more I used it the more I realized just how plain, lack of details and inaccurate it was. The next thing that burned my bacon was the fact I always had to put the disk into the laptop in order to use it! I guess their afraid someone is going to pirate their software. This software reads the S/N of the GPS it is connected to and it remembers it! The software is no good without the Magellan GPS. Either way it would not be practical to give the software to someone else. Anyone who is on the go with their GPS (think about that) and their laptop is not going to find it practical to carry the CD with them all the time. Half the time I can’t find my original disks anyway and having to find the disk to use my GPS is sometimes a problem. I’ve saved all the maps that I use onto the 512 memory chip. The only thing I use the software for now is for setting markers and recording the tracks from my trips with.
At this point in time I feel I have around $600 tied up in all this Magellan GPS and software and I got screwed. If I had my $600 back I would buy another brand of GPS and find out who has the better system.
I still use the Meridian Gold GPS and it works all right. My money is invested in this GPS unit and I can’t warrant buying another hand held unit. If I knew then what I know now I would have spent the $600 and bought a better unit made by another company.
I have set up a small website with images from the MapSend software and a compare page to the DeLorme 2007 laptop GPS software. http://www.dream-link.org/reviews
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