More on flourescents

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm amazed it's economic to do that on a small mass produced item.

That'll be a nice bit of provenance for the Antiques Roadshow in a few years time.

[Steve Firth]

It was really the start of GPS as a consumer product. Both Trimble and Garmin rushed thousands of handsets out to US troops when the USA discovered they didn't have enough military units. At the same time the US removed Selective Availability from the satellite signal and improved the accuracy of the units. After the ruckus finished they took the decision not to degrade the position fix again. Returned units were refurbed and sold onto the domestic market since they didn't contain any classified technology. The proces fell from the original £1500-2500 for a Magellan hand-held GPS to the £200 mark at which point I bought mine.

The bluetooth GPS I bought for £20 a few months back is actually a better unit than the 12XL, but I like the 12XL features when I'm sailing a boat.

[Huge]

All the "refurb" items I've bought appear to be new old stock, still sealed in manufacturers packaging. I've always assumed it's a marketing term...

[dmc]

Apple refurb stuff I've bought seems to be tested (they often have a test sheet in with them) and then repackaged in plain brown packaging instead of the glossy box.

Full warranty and stuff though - I've been impressed (and saved a fair bit :-))

Darren

[Huge]

I think we can conclude that "refurb" means whatever the vendors want it to!

[Steve Firth]

Sounds about right, some stuff is definitely more "refurb" than others. With mobile phones it seems to be that they pop the case off, and respray the case or fit a new one, reassemble, add a new battery.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Think it is with CPC - only thing like that I've bought from them was an Olympus camera and everything appeared to be in original packaging.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I can see that on a unit costing several thousand, but brand new sat nav units are under the 100 quid mark now. So probably - what - 20 quid ex-factory?

Whatever happened to the sun and stars?

[Huge]

[Steve Firth]

None of them happen to be conveniently located near Nab tower.

[Dave Liquorice]

Do your really mean TrafficMaster or TMC? They are different data sources, from what I've heard TMC isn't that good compared to TrafficMaster.

It will with full postcode but not all units have that. If it only goes to sub-sector (1st letter of second letter sequence) it'll only get you to within a few miles out in the country side.

[Tim S]

Dave Liquorice coughed up some electrons that declared:

Pretty sure it's TrafficMaster, the one the RAC own.

Mine seems fairly on the ball. Had trouble with the receiver though - had to send that back, but Garmin sent me a new one and it's been very reliable and a more useful source of data than the police-controlled motorways signs!

[Dave]

Nice one ... glad to be of help. Dave

[Jeweller]

Much appreciated. (Has this thread become scrambled on your machine? Here it's mixed in with M-i-L's SatNav.)

[Andy Burns]

I think that the first posting of MIL satnav was accidentally to this thread rather than as a new thread, that probably explains why the O/P couldn't see it and assumed it went missing so re-posted it in its own thread ...