You need to do a hard reset on it. Apparantly this is common with 201. Go to the amazon.com page on it and look through the user reviews. THere is a reference on to how perform the reset. MIne behaved as yours is doing now. Luckily I had noted the reset issue and was prepared for it.
Device has worked perfectly since then,
Good Luck.

fal7

THANK YOU! I did the hard reset (with the unit off, hold down the MODE button while pressing the ON/OFF button, for those of you who are interested) at lunch today and the GPS signal locked on within five minutes.

Woo-hoo!! Now I can actually use it!

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Dave in WI
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"What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore" - Wilco

Glad it worked for you. Also glad to know other people appreciate Wilco. Great Band although I probably am more partial to Son Volt or whatever is left of them.

fal7

Yeah, I like Son Volt, too, but I find Jay Farrar's voice a little irritating on EVERY cut. That's why I love Uncle Tupelo, with the mix of Farrar and Tweedy songs to change things up. I think Farrar just put out a solo album, FYI.

Thanks again for the tip on the Forerunner! Now, if the software would just come out...

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Dave in WI
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"What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore" - Wilco

Yes I am also waiting on the software...I keep checking every day but no luck.

I have both the timex bodylink and the forerunner. I have been a diehard Garmin user since back in the day of the GPS40, their first consumer model. However, I wonder if they had to give up a little in antenna performance to make the forerunner so small. The gps unit of the timex definitely works better: faster acquisition, better satellite lock under trees, works in the car, SEEMS to give a more accurate pace. I am running off road thru sparse trees and low hills. The features of the Forerunner are really nice as a runners gps but I love the average heart rate and pace/speed info on the splits on the timex. I hope garmin can make a forerunner with better gps function and add heart rate functions.

I also bought the Bodylink but I haven't received it in the mail yet, the plan is to evaluate one vs the other then decide which one is better for what I want it for. I've been using the Garmin for about a week now and just last night while out on a run I kept getting a "weak GPS signal" due to some cloud cover and snow so I wasn't too impressed. Hopefully I'll get the Bodylink in the mail soon and will be able to decide which one to keep for me and which one to give to the girlfriend!

I was finally able to reach customer service at Garmin and ask them about the things I was still not sure about:

1. Confirmed, it calculates distances correctly on a 3-D grid.

2. It does not have the capability of displaying cumulative ascent/descent. Although this is something that could be implemented in firmware, there is no plan to do so in the foreseeable future.

3. You cannot download maps to the Forerunner; this is not just a firmware limitation -- the hardware does not support it.

The shock though came in discussing the altitude-measuring capabilities of the device: its accuracy is only +-100 feet! The Garmin representative readily admitted that the Forerunner is far worse in this respect to barometric devices, hence its usefullness on the bike is limited.

I think I'm going to wait for the next model.

John

Not to flame you or anything, but why are you so concerned with the 2D/3D question? According to my calculations, unless your entire run/ride consists of going up and down Alp d'Huez it doesn't make any difference. Even if the average grade on your run/ride was 14% (pretty damn steep if you ask me). The error is only about 51.49 feet for each mile, or less than 1% (.97 or so). 1% is pretty good, and about what they claim for overall accuracy anyway.

Just in case I have my head on wrong, my calculations are:

1 Mile = 5,280ft = a, @ 14% grade (14 up for every 100 feet) = 739.2 ft elevation = b, hypotenuse c = SQRT(a^2 + b^2) = SQRT(27,878,400 + 546,416.64) = SQRT(28,424,816.64) = 5,331.493 ft

51.49 ft / 5,331.493 ft = .97%

As I've stated before, I took mine on a bike ride test. The ride had ~5,000 feet of climbing over 42 miles and my bike computer and Garmin distance came out exactly the same(off by 1/10 of a mile).

There's a new model out called the Foretrex 201. The biggest benefit with this model is that it is WAAS enabled increasing the accuracy of the unit. The Forerunner has an accuracy of ~15 meters the accuracy of the Foretrex will be ~3 meters. Sorry folks, WAAS is available only for the US.

Hate to tell you, but...

5,000 ft climbing, assuming you started and finished at the same altitude = 10,000 ft of elevation change over 42 miles or about 2.2% grade.

42 miles = 221,760 ft = c, 10,000 ft elevation = b. a = SQRT(c^2 - b^2) = 221,534.41. A whole 225.58 ft different. 1/10 of a mile = 528 ft.

I am not saying that it's not 'better' to have it determine altitude, and therefore distance in 3D, but unless you are going up 20% grades for the whole time, you won't notice the difference.

Ok, so I went back and recalled my actual numbers. Distance was 46 miles and 45.95 miles as on my bike computer vs. the forerunner for the 5000 ft of climbing. Off by 1/20th mile.

I'm a little confused with the point you are trying to make. I was simply trying to agree with you that the unit is extremely accurate, even over hilly terrain.

The point being (I gather) that the Earth is really, really flat when it comes to going up and down hills. Unless you are going very steep for very long, going up and down hills adds very little to the total distance traveled.

Slightly on-topic trivia question: how much longer is a string that goes around the world one meter off the ground than if it were flat on the ground?

Ken Lehner

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I wasn't trying to jump on your case or anything, and it sounds like the Garmin unit is a great piece of equipment. I have a Timex S + D and think it's great also. I am just trying to point out that the entire question of 2D vs. 3D is moot, any error introduced from only calculating the distance in 2D would be completely masked by the overall error of the GPS system anyway.

In your example, by going to 46 miles instead of 42, it actually makes the possible error from altitude changes smaller, only 205.95 ft, less than the 1/20 of a mile you observed.

Oh, 6.28 meters.

It's not the accuracy per se that I am concerned about; it's what this tells you about the effort that went into designing and building the device. I work in product development myself so I know how easy (or hard) it is to implement certain features in hardware or firmware, and if the unit could not do a 3-D calculation it means that it was either rushed to market or not very well thought out.

For instance, why wouldn't they implement a cumulative ascent/descent feature? Almost all altimeter watches have this, so why didn't they just copy the features that similar products on the market have?

These things, at least to me, signal a development process that was hobbled; hence, I'd rather wait for the Forerunner MkII.

John

I see your point, and you are certainly correct in the cumulative ascent feature, but for 3D, although it is just software, it is more complicated. For 3D they need to rely on having additional satellites 'visible'. Considering the reception problems associated with a moving receiver, trees, buildings etc., I would rather have it just worry about doing 2D, since the error is negligible (nearly), then to 'fail' when they don't have enough satellites for 3D. Of course, they could have all kinds of fall back modes etc., but then, in the end, are they really any more accurate? Why spend any time/energy/money solving a problem to increase accuracy, in most situations, by less than 1%, when you know you can't do better than 1% on the best days.