briscoec

I was recently forced to upgrade to the newer software (G2) for Blue Chart (BC). My old hardware died and the older style garmin data cards don't work in the new models. To say the least the new soft ware is very disappointing. I fish inshore Galveston Bay (Houston area). The new BC G2, does not give the names of the reefs, or their locations (it does show a few sqiggly lines). This is the same as having a road gps that shows streets without the names. Capish? No reef locations. Are you kidding me?

I made the mistake of trading my old G1 software in for a 30% discount. What a mistake. I wish I had gone on Ebay and bought another old unit that could use the G1 data card.

Anyone that uses the Blue Chart for locating and fishing reefs is going to be in for a huge shock when they buy the +300$ software and find out it doesn't give reef names and locations. Garmin acted very indifferent to my issues and were completely uncooperative with helping get my old data card back and returned for this new junk. The G2 is really pretty, but if it doesn't give me reef locations what's the use? I don't get lost on the bay, you can see land!!! Add to that the new models are very difficult to navigate. You have to go through several pages and scroll down to locate a chart. There is not a quit button that returns you to the navigation chart. It only returns you to a page that has a scroll down menu that you have to go through to go back to the nav chart. Garmin has lost their minds. They said they did it to make it easier to view on your computer! Are you kidding me? I thought I bought a marine GPS for my boat, not my computer. Garmin, you lost a lot of business and don't even know it. I had two friends that will keep their units and old G1 data cards.
My advise to anyone that is looking at upgrading, I'd look at Hummingbird!!

HumVee

briscoec, it's a bummer that the newer BlueChart software is such a disappointment to you! Are you sure there isn't a setting that might improve matters for you? I was pretty upset with the detail of my City navigator NT road maps on my Garmin zūmo 660, until I discovered that the default map detail in 3D view was Medium. I bumped up to High, and was much happier. I still have to zoom in pretty far to get the names of smaller streets - but the details are there....

briscoec

The zoom in was the thing we had to do on the older software for Blue Chart. But it doesn't work on the new version. It's pretty crazy. I spent 3 hours on the phone with the Garmin Marine Geeks. They said they were'n't sure why they quit naming them, but probably so it would have less clutter. Oh my gosh, names of the reefs we fish is considered clutter. About like your street GPS leaving off the street names. I spent an entire afternoon and loaded the names off maps that had the POI info. I think I was nearly as frustrated with how much more difficult the hardware is to navigate. "Home" should always take you to the map! It's no different driving a boat and going through 3 screens to get to a map view than it is a car. Same way for other info, you have to go through several screens with drop down boxes. Oh well, Garmin what were you thinking?

HumVee

Garmin Support claim that they pass on customer feedback. Maybe if a lot of people who use the new BlueChart G2 complain about it, they'll restore the data on the next map update. I'm sure they still have all the data on file, so it'd be a relatively easy thing to expand the new map's database.

I also agree that there should be a quick way to 'snap' back to the map screen. Another forum member said that you could get back quickly by double-tapping on the Back button (at least on the zumo's), but I haven't gotten it to work.