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Ordered for the telecom crew to use. Seems to be working great.

I bought the Venture back in the summer of 2003 and I was never let down by it. At that time the speedometer on my car went out and as a cheaper alternative to buying the new, expensive gauge cluster for my car, I bought this GPS with a dashboard mount. So this product was used literally every day, sometimes several times a day, and for several hours a day for over 2 years.

First of all, I really only use it in navigation mode with the time, cardinal direction, and the speed being displayed, so I cannot comment an much of the other features of the unit. I have done some minor geocaching with it though, and it performed great for that, although it is tedious to enter in lat. and long. coordinates directly into the unit. I will say that using it as often as I do in my car, it is amazing. To be honest, I did not expect it to last this long. I have never had much trouble with tree cover causing a lost signal, but it does happen on occasion.

From the beginning I used rechargeable batteries and the unit has surprisngly long battery life, even with the backlight on. I replace the batteries about once every week or two, but remember, its on for up to a few hours a day.

All in all, this is a great GPS. Again, I can't vouch for many of its features, but I can vouch for its long life and consistant operation. I have gotten hundreds, if not thousands of hours of use out of this and it has yet to let me down.

I have used GPS for years for flying to driving, but a lumber man turned me on to this inexpensive gadget as an invaluable tool for calculating acreage for fertilization or liming of fields. Turn it on, drive around the perimeter of the field you wish to measure, hit the button and it tells you exactly the acreage inside the area. You will pay for it the first time you use it. You will never order more or less than needed again.

I returned a Cobra GPS 100 and upgraded to the eTrex Venture for the extra money. What a difference only a few dollars more can make! this is my first GPS unit ever, and I had no problems picking everything up within a day.

For starters, it only took about two minutes to locate a satellite for the first time (supposed to take up to five) and averages about 30 seconds to locate one in general. The screen resolution is easy to read and the options for customizing the map make it even easier if you have trouble reading small text. The waypoint markers are easy to define and edit. The compass seems to be very quick in picking up your movements. Almost everything is customizable giving you endless options for your specific use for the GPS unit. The unit is comfortable in the hand, although some of the buttons are a little stiff at first.

My satellite reception is excellent. I took it hiking in 40°F rain and hail (obviously very overcast) and only lost reception once while walking under heavy tree cover. On the way home I placed it on the dashboard and it tracked me 33 miles home without losing reception once. This was in 500 ft visibility fog on a one lane curvy mountain road. This unit definitely gets the job done.

My only gripes are there's no beep or sound when it loses reception and you have to press enter to acknowledge you have lost reception, thus it begins tracking you again. So if you hike by turning the unit on and placing it in your backpack, or even on your belt, you could have lost reception and not known it, and because you haven't acknowledged the unit, it's not tracking you anymore (as far as I can tell).

Other than that, this unit works perfect for getting you in and out of areas where there's no trails and finding that perfect spot to spend the night or fish and hunt.

This was a mild disappointment. It is the second Garmin product that fails me, I also owned a Pilot II, whose firmware at some point lost its marbles, and now it displays only some pages and refuses to get a GPS fix.

The Venture had, almost from the beginning, a problem with the display, which flickered and became alternatively all black or white, or lost some horizontal lines, creating a nice "blinds" effect.

The problem normally went away by moderate slapping. But it is not a nice start.

Second point: the battery contacts are sub-quality, you just need to shake the unit a little and the electrodes lose contact with the battery, causing the unit to switch off.

Third: when the memory is fairly full, the operating system goes in overload mode, sometimes it does not manage to acquire the user input, and you find yourself trying to use the buttons without actually managing to do nothing. Erase the memory and the problem disappears.

Four: a few leaves overhead and you lose the fix, the sensitivity and selectivity is not great.

Maybe I had a bad firmware, who knows, but I don't want to change my firmware every month, I expect the original firmware to be OK for a while.

I just bought a Magellan, I'm curious to see if it's better or worse.