My break with Delorme came when they created a nice little yellow brick and bundled it with yet another new version of TOPO USA. On this version, you could split the screen in two, one of which could be a 3D perspective view of the terrain ahead of your track.
Ok, so my ancestor would have been a little bored with a 3D perspective view of a flat ocean . . . I lived and worked in California! Our hills are higher than the mountains of Kansas. I mean, they call the hills around my home, the coastal mountain range. I avoid Southern California when I can, but when the Santa Ana's come and blow the car exhaust out to sea, you can watch the sun set in a glorious reds and yellows, turn around and see the snow caped summit of Mount Baldy.
Oh yeah, I'm told that Kansas doesn't even have hills. . .
A GPS Datalogger, this tiny yellow brick from Delorme promised to wirelessly, through Bluetooth, connect with my computer(s) and allow me to transfer tracks to my laptop.
By this time I'd framed the chart that Popular Science put out explaining what Bluetooth was, how it worked, what it promised. Some guys pin up centerfolds from that pajama clad mansion guy down in Southern California, us techies in Silicon Valley frame radio frequency charts (as long as they are in full glorious color, without the airbrush nonsense).
WOW! that would be cool. I was going to buy the latest TOPO USA software (only $99 bundled with the yellow brick thingee).
But what's this? it doesn't come in the DVD version? Why would I want to buy a pack of 7 CDs and upload each one to my hard drive?
At least that is what I would have thought if I'd noticed that the letters 'DVD' weren't on the package. Every other version I'd purchased (for full price - Delorme doesn't do upgrades like normal software companies) was all the maps on a single DVD.
Not only did I have to pay an additional $79 to get the DVD -
I couldn't get the brick to work.
Alright, that's not entirely true. It worked exactly once. But I was so amazed at the promise of bluetooth, I had every bluetooth device I could buy at Fry's Electronics talking to both my desktop and my laptop through my $199 logitech bluetooth keyboard and mouse radio . . . But as soon as I went wild transferring files wirelessly between the computers, the yellow brick refused to give up it's track data. It had transfered the GPS track from work to home and back. But wouldn't give anything else up.
Calls to Delorme's 800 number were echoed by calls to my doctor's office for more blood pressure medicine.
The yellow brick was probably going nuts wondering why it's been stuck in the bottom of my desk drawer. Hopefully the batteries died before it stopped tracking the same 12 inch movement of the drawer being opened and closed. I just wish that data track was being beamed back to the Delorme headquarters. It would have served them right.
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