Garmin: It's a Love-Hate Thing

Oh, I love data.

But man, do I hate being a slave to data.  I want it on my terms. 

So, oh, yeah, when my Forerunner 405 gave up the batterial ghost, those were tough times.

But now, I've sucked it up.  I finally splurged on a Garmin Forerunner 610 and it's been 48 hours of effort and reading and searching and uploading updates and calling the tech support folks who are trying to coach me by text but finally give in (Garmin tech support, by the way, is much, much better, than my last adventure with them a few years ago, when there was essentially none.  They now have phone support, and they are nice!)

After 48 hours of fighting to make it work, the Garmin is totally up to date with what happened this AM, but it won't sync, and won't acknowledge the routes we've done this evening, in other words, it won't own up to the work I've done...

So, I feel betrayed.  I'm really not a fan of the reliability of Garmin products.  My first 205 lasted 2+ years.  My second one the same.  My 405 lasted just a little over a year and in protest I ran without a GPS watch for several months.  But, finally, as I mentioned, I'm getting back into running more seriously. So I need my data!

I spent much of today on-line with their awesome (much improved) help desk.  I've re-installed every driver, I've re-associated every device, I've tried alternate browsers and I've re-installed every piece of software, and I've re-booted at least 5 times.

At the end of the day, after much struggling I'm sure it'll end up just fine.  All of my data in Garmin Connect and my watch working as expected.

In the meantime, I have weekend plans and holiday plans for the 4th!

Also, I spent my last 36 hours migrating Exchange 2007 - 2010 (which was much more labor intensive than the Garmin, but less frustrating as I don't have to deal with it on a daily basis).  So at BBQ, a subset of us discussed how it is possible that the electronic age has not brought net benefits to us... interesting polite BBQ talk in the middle of Silicon Valley, no?

But, really, the important part is...my email is finally migrated (fingers crossed) and my Garmin still has all the data, it's just a matter of extracting it.

Viva (Data)!