Flashes of Panic

For years, I did my geocaching with a Magellan Meridian Gold. Its PC interface was a laughably obsolete serial cable, but I could write waypoints to an SD card which the GPS would then read. Eventually, it died an ugly death involving leaking batteries and corrosion, and I went to replace it. I picked up a Magellan Triton 400 from L.L. Bean, figuring that was the natural progression and that a newer model would be better. Hey, the Triton actually had a USB cable!

Turns out that development goes backwards at Magellan. My Mac would not recognize or talk to the Triton, but that’s more of a disappointment than a surprise; MacCaching, a cache manager for Macs, explicitly specifies that it doesn’t work with the Triton series (and so do a surprising number of 1-star reviews on Amazon). What’s more, it turns out the Triton won’t use the SD card for waypoints, only for “media”—photos and sound clips. (This model of Triton doesn’t even have a camera, making this limitation even more laughable.)

I figured I’d try my usual “doesn’t work with Macs” back door, a Parallels VM running Windows XP. Except that Magellan’s software then refused to connect with the GPS, even though Parallels was quite definite about taking charge of the USB device. The Triton just wouldn’t make a connection.

I had hoped today, with a day off and nice weather, that I could spend some time outside hunting tupperware in my new area. Instead I spent two hours plus fighting with the GPS just to load waypoints. I could’ve keyed them into the GPS in that time. Finally I gave up and put everything back in the package and drove it to the L.L. Bean retail store in Albany.

Point one for L.L.’s Albany outlet: they took back the Triton (which was in a box with one of their price tags, but which I bought maybe two or three summers ago despite my lack of time for caching) and gave me a store gift card for the full value on the price tag. (No credit for the Maine sales tax, but I suppose the state has long since spent it anyway.)

Point two: an enthusiastic young bike mechanic not only went through the specs on a stack of Garmins, but pulled a pair out from the back room and let me test loading waypoints on them. I had brought my MacBook with me, because I wasn’t paying a cent for a receiver until I had seen every step of the “load waypoints to GPS” use case working. We spread cables and receivers and laptop out on a counter in the bike shop as I first slurped the default waypoints off the Garmin, then loaded a dozen or so Watervliet and Troy waypoints.

So I walked out with an eTrex Venture HC, which actually cost (tax and all) about $15 less than the Magellan. It’s pretty basic, but it works so far and we’ll see how it plays in the long run.

But I will underline this point yet again: If you’re a Mac user, Magellan doesn’t care about you. Don’t waste your time.