Garmin 78 - still a good candidate for an off road GPS?

Time to upscale for me.

So I already did one trip with the 78 -- what a great GPS. Simple and effective like the old e trex but the usability, speed of loading, etc, are all so much better. And I'm pumped to still have buttons. Yay for the 78! Only thing was I couldn't get it to load more than one track at once but I'll have to work on figuring that out assuming it has that capability...

I'm not sure what you mean by "load more than one track at once" but any track can be set to "show on map" and you can do that for multiple tracks. Some people want a "Show all tracks" setting which no modern era Garmin has, though.

whenever I leave my current map and move to a new map to "show on screen" it removes the previously displayed one. I'm pretty sure this is just a setting somewhere, I just have to find it. It's probably in the control panel under "display more than 1 track" or something like that..

Go to Track manager, open each track and set to On/Off. Also reset your choice of color (another Garmin thinks they know better).

Showing tracks has nothing to do with showiing maps.

tracks may be disappearing due to zoom level settings.....

That would be a real design flaw in the 78.

If it was the case, but it's not. I zoomed to the 300 km level on my 62S and it still showed the tracks I had set to "Show on map".

in the 60csx Map Page / Map Setup / Tracks Page you can set a zoom level where tracks are not displayed....found that out the hard way...
I'm wondering if this characteristic is continued into the 62/78 series.

If it is possible to turn off track display, it isn't obvious. I just spent some time trying to get a track which was set to "View on map" to not display by settings in the Map setup screens and nothing I changed made the track disappear.

I am looking on my old 76C, do you mean:

Map Page / Setup Map / Track Icon (2nd from left) / Max Zoom / Saved Tracks or Track Log?

Mine are set Auto and never experimented with this setting.

yes....
I downloaded the 78 manual and found much less info on this stuff...didn't even find where it said how many tracks a 78 can handle...

I'm interested in the 78 as it seems it may be a better deal for someone who tends to use tracks made by others than a Montana.
I know someone who is probably not going to sit around studying google earth for remote roads and making tracks but would be happy to have me give him some tracks I've made and use them.

Another trait of the 60/76 was that the default setting (map setup page) for displayed tracks is 3,000 points while the active log can hold 10,000. I always bumped the 3000 number up to the maximum value it will accept which is 10,000. I have never noticed a downside to using the larger number, redraw and clutter seem normal.

Not sure if the 62/78 has any kind of similar setting.

Bruce

Jerry, I think this one should be in your dualsportwest.com 60/76C Setup Settings instructions. Having it set to 3000 screwed me up one time. The tail end of my recorded track kept getting eaten up (packman style) on the map screen as I rode, and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually I found that setting and bumped it up to 10,000. I think it MIGHT slow down the map draw speed if you zoom WAY out with a long recorded track, but at least your whole track is shown.

The other related negative effect this can have is if you utilize the ACTIVE LOG XXX feature to pre-load a bunch of tracks to get around the 20 track limit. In that case, one or more ACTIVE LOG tracks you want to follow or see on the map may not be shown because it might be in the memory beyond the 3000 point (or whatever your setting is at). I quit using that ACTIVE LOG approach when I started converting large sets of tracks into maps with GPX2IMG.

yes and if you download the track to mapsource before saving you get the max # of points before saving cuts to 500 pts. (on 60/76)

I didn't see any reference to this in the 78 manual. Any 78 users have insight on this?

You wouldn't be using Mapsource with the 78. You'd be using Basecamp. While it is possible to use Mapsource, you wouldn't be getting the best out of the gps if you did so. Yes, Mapsource seems easier to use, but most people who put the effort into learning the differences stay with Basecamp, warts and all. BC is a lot better than it used to be. And the Mac version is better than the Windows version, if you have a choice.

And most people just set the 62/78/Montana/Oregon/Dakota/Colorado to auto-archive once a day, rather than specifically saving tracks. They end up dated properly in an Archive directory, and can be brought back to the Tracks menu by making a "Favorite" of the archived track.

thanks for the info on the 78
my 60 creates the daily archive file but just can't access it inside the gps

Good points along with two others in another post (type of Bat & zoom vs see tracks).

On your 1st, only a 76 issue with 76x, not limit or wrap on data card.

However my new 78 is due any day so to hell with that old crap, I will be working on new bling.

'Bout time too!

Perhaps you just did not make yourself clear but this is wrong.

With 60/76x, you can same anything you want to 500 pts but if you upload to PC you get active log, saved 500 pt version, and everything you rode from your data card. Only if YOU decide to CLEAR Active Log do you kind of loose data but it is still on the data card so actually you can push all the buttons and nothing is lost.