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Matt & Colyn -
I have a 480 installed in our ES, but have not flown it yet. The box has an excellent simulator built in and it can handle almost every aspect of the box having to do with the GPS/Nav side. It even sets the ILS frequency in the Nav side of the box automatically. I have spent several hours with it to learn the interface and consider the 480 a fabulous piece of equipment. The learning curve is not all that steep. One thing for certain, being able to specify the airways, together with the entry and exit points, is a real plus over the 530 or 430.
However, the simulator for your PC mentioned in the quote below, is a real piece of junk and one simply cannot evaluate the 480 based on this brain-dead piece of software. I tried it several times and have taken it off the PC.
I agree that the biggest downside for anyone looking at installing a Garmin is what they intend to do with the three boxes. It appears from their PR releases and delays, that there is some uncertainty. The decision will probably be a mix of: (1) cost to the installed base to upgrade the old 430's and 530's. The installed base is quite large and the upgrades have probably been hard to engineer/package to get a reasonable upgrade price. (2) costs of screwing a large installed base of 480 owners by chucking that box over the side and (3) Eventual costs to certify and produce the W series to make them competitive with the 480's in both the price and features categories.
Cheers,
John
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:04:35 -0400, colyncase on earthlink <colyncase@earthlink.net> wrote:
and get the simulator and try it out.
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