1. OK, I'll give that a try - but I don't expect that it will work, because there are a ton of people on the Garmin forums complaining about this issue. The changelog from the next-to-latest to latest version indicated a fix for this issue, but it clearly didn't work. So it was on the radar for a while at least. It is really pissing people off (the 705 isn't cheap) but Garmin has been totally uncommunicative.
2. Got it, thanks.
3. This is another long-standing "known problem". There is a steady stream of broken sensors being sent to Garmin for repair and has been for years. I'm frankly amazed that there hasn't been a fix yet.
4. OK, cool. It would be good to get a definitive answer, but so far so good.... Good to know about the Audible player. As much as I friggin' hate the Audible subscription business model, audiobooks are THE best way to make long trips feel shorter, and having the player in the GPS (especially because the GPS can cut in for directions without losing track of the book) is sheer friggin' genius.
Now, an observation:
I've been a very long time Garmin customer. I've got one of those yellow bargin-basement devices, a Rino 520 for work, a nuvi for the car, a 705 and 500 for the bikes, and even a GPS-10 bluetooth reciever I used to use with my Palm Lifedrive. So I'm familliar with Garmin products and the Garmin way of doing things.
Garmin clearly believes in "release early, release often", especially with device firmware (desktop software not so much). Early versions of device firmware typically lack features and have more than a few bugs, but there will be a constant stream of updates which fix bugs and add features.
Sometimes there are regressions and new bugs created, but that's software development for you.
But when you use customers as testers like this - which is fine; that's the Open Source development model less the open source and the ability to submit patches - there needs to be a communication channel back to the customers to let them know what is going on.
As it sits right now, customers communicate bugs, that goes into a black hole, and there is no feedback on where the bug is, if it is being looked at, or where the plans are for future development.
As was pointed out in earlier posts, these devices remain viable for a very long time - and they ain't cheap. Yes, I get that the Edge 800 is the new thing and that is going to suck up development resources, and I'm OK with new features not necessarily being backported to older devices. But I *DO* expect that known bugs with existing devices get examined and fixed. And as a customer, I want to know *when* the bug is going to get fixed. I don't need it (necessarily) fixed right this second, but I do expect that it will be addressed eventually.
If you browse the Garmin forums, you will find all sorts of customers who love their devices and want to see bugs fixed, and who are tremendously frustrated with Garmin's lack of communication back to them.
Can you communicate this to your bosses? Or is this a mater of Garmin policy?
DG