Thursday, January 10, 2008

The K stands for Kwality

Garmin - you suck.
I was all excited over the coolness of this doohicky - a watch with backlit display and dual time/alarm, combined with a GPS, pedometer, heart rate monitor, calories, speed, pace and lap time tracker that automatically updates your run data to your computer as soon as you are near it. It even has cool touch controls and comes in 2 colours. Sounded fantastic - as I need a new watch soon and I've been looking into a doohicky to do all these other things for me (well pedometer and heart rate anyways) for running in the spring..."Wow, Only $320" I thought. "I could save up for that and use it well".

BUT the more I looked into it, Garmin played the increasingly prevalent "some conditions apply, some accessories required" card. Turns out the heart rate monitor and strap you need to ad to the watch to make it work is ~$80 and the pedometer you mount on your shoe is another $115...and there are varying levels of software that go with the watch to log and download your run data in your computer...most of which are ~$50 to do any geeky analysis of it.
Bastards.

I was honestly excited about a useful doohicky...that doesn't happen much to me anymore. And now? Well I can't honestly justify over $500 on a fitness watch...when the base watch without accessories does nearly all my current watch does (but doesn't look as cool). I suppose I'll have to get back at looking at a boring strap on heart rate/pedometer thingy.

I just can't help feeling like I am 6 years old, I opened my gift from Santa and it has socks inside.
And I have to pee.
Blast it...

3 comments:

Reb said...

Give it a couple of years, then it will be cheaper. Not to mention they will have worked out the bugs.

Good luck finding a cool heart monitor/pedometer thingy!

Rimshot said...

I HATE getting socks and having to pee.

If you'd like, I'll run along side and count your ped's for you.

As long as you don't run too far.




Or very fast.




Or too early in the morning.

elasticwaistbandlady said...

Okay. Pedo in Spanish means "to fart." I blogged this anecdote referring to the inexorable value of a true to life pedometer.

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