A GPS User Manual: Working With Garmin Receivers

I'm enjoying this book. If you are interested in playing around with Garmin GPS devices (GPS is a sort of hobby for many), you probably want to get it, and the 4 star rating is for you. However, if you want a book about GPS in general or about brands other than Garmin, this isn't the book you want.Much of the book amounts to a more detailed owner's manual than what Garmin gives you. It covers handheld units pretty well but is not intended for other GPS device categories like aviation. In covering many different models, it also accomplishes a lot of comparison between their user interfaces and other features. I like that it does a better job than Garmin's manuals of explaining how to think about the user interface - that is, the strategy behind it.There's also info on using Garmin software, and some explanitory info on things like DGPS and WAAS, the NMEA interface, external antennas, and similar related stuff. There's an entire chapter on secret keystroke sequences that access undocumented abilities (not that these are all that powerful). I would have liked more of this ancilliary information, more depth and variety, but did appreciate what there was.One unusual downside: this book may have the most typo's of any I've read. I bet there's about one per page, of the sort where another word is substituted ("use" instead of "user", "you" instead of "your") as if they only used a spell check. But that hasn't interfered much with using it.

I bought this so I could learn more about my etrex vista C. The book is a little out of date for the more recent GPSrs but is still generally applicable. I did learn many things from it. One thing, though, is that it tries to cover a very wide range of units, this leads to a lot of variations in the instructions and it gets pretty repetitive. There are also a large number of typos in the book. Things like "you" instead of "your" and "an" instead of "and." They clearly used a spell checker but didn't have the benefit of a good proofreader. This really didn't take too much away from the value of the book but it didn't improve it either.If you have a Garmin handheld then I would recommend this book.

I purchased the book after being asked to process GPS data from the Garmin devices at work. The book may be very useful in practical use of the GPS in the field as that was 99% of the content, but that wasn't my job. For processing data using the garmin program once you download the data, the book had a little over one page of advice. So if you need to use a Garmin GPS in the field, you may find this book invaluable. If you need to crunch the data once you get back to the lab, the book has no value.

A lot of information about GPS but does not cover my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx

EITHER I MISSED THE DATE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK OR IT WAS NOT IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE ITEM. TOO OLD TO BE USEFUL. SHOULD NOT EVEN BE OFFERED FOR PURCHASE

Too complicated. I wanted a simple, how-to-use a GPS. Maybe, if I ever learn to use the GPS, it may be of some value. On the other hand, I may never use it.

This book explains clearly what GPS is, and throws in all of the when's, how's and what's. I learned more by reading a few pages of Dale Depriest's work than reading chapters in other GPS pubs.Well worth your money; go fot it!(I use the Garmin Rino 530 GPS Navigator with 2-Way Radio.)

This book is too much text and with 300 pages only has 37 pictures of very poor dot matrix quality. No step by step instructions. Much reading, very little learning.

A bit 'techy' for me, not really what I was after. I will need to look around for a better user manual.

I was looking for a manual to use with my Garmin Satnav and found this to be too technical for me and probably outdated. Maybe I misunderstood what was written on the website as to the purpose of the book.

Somehat disappointed with this book. It covers the whole range of Garmin handheld GPS thus for the majority of readers there is masses of content which is not applicable. The general explanations covering how GPS works are helpful. Perhaps the publication requires some updating with refinement of content to the latest versions of GPS handhelds.

good price and service

it is to tecnical I thought it would simplify it not