Waiting for Garmin

Blue sky day today after heavy rain for the past few days, liking the look of a bit of sunshine, I decided to go for a run on my lunch break. Now, I am a big fan of Garmin, especially of my bike computer. It is a legendary device. But today I wasn’t using the bike computer; I was using my Garmin Forerunner 910xt watch. I left my desk, walked to the changing room, got changed and then walked outside the building and turned on the watch. I started dong a few stretches while I waited for it to find a satellite. After five minutes of waiting and it being a bit cool outside, I started jogging. Eventually, 14 minutes after turning the watch on, it found the satellite. I was only planning a 40 minute run, so the time it took to find a satellite adds to 35% of my total run time. This is nuts. This being my workplace in the centre of Dublin City, I can’t just leave the watch outside while I get changed, so I have no alternative to this.

Apparently Steve Jobs tried to get the older versions of Apple computers to boot up faster to save users time and to minimise frustration. Why can’t Garmin speed up this process for all of its devices and especially for the slower ones? 14 minutes is too long. It takes the bike computer a couple of minutes. What is it about the Forerunner and finding the satellite?  It is not just once, it’s every time. If I start a run from home, I have to leave the watch outside for 15 minutes before I go (this takes come planning).

It is hard to criticise Garmin devices in any other way but this, couple them with Strava and keeping track of data while on runs and logging the results have become incredibly easy. This post asks Garmin to address the one area where help is needed. No one wants to stand outside their workplace, home or anywhere else waiting for their watch to find a satellite. Everyone wants to log their entire run and not to lose that bit the Garmin didn’t catch because it was trying to find a satellites, so few people who own these devices will start before the connection is achieved.