On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 15:47 +0000, Alan B. Pearce wrote:
> >The benefit however is it's a more modern GPS chipset, to it
> >locks on cold start much faster then my "few year old" GPS,
> >and also can recover from dropouts MUCH faster.
> 
> This seems to be a benefit of having many more parallel channels in the 
> receiver. More channels allows it to try so many more satellite combinations 
> in parallel, so it finds them faster. 

It's more then that. Downloading the almanac (needed on cold start)
shouldn't be any faster whether you're listening to 12 sats or 1.

On top of that, the last few GPS receivers I bought had the same number
of channels (12 or 16?) yet the newer ones are faster still.

While not the fastest, my Garmin eTrex is a VERY impressive receiver.
Although it's a few years old, it's still one of the fastest receivers I
have. It's a little large (especially compared the USB one I bought
which is about 1 square inch in size), but it lasts a VERY long time on
a pair of AAs. Continuous use results in a battery lifetime of AT LEAST
20 hours, I'm not actually sure how long it lasts. Even on lower
capacity rechargeables it's gone at least 12 hours non stop. Only
complaint I have with it is it's not as sensitive as the newest
receivers. Walking through a forest often results in loss of lock.

TTYL

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