Product Reviews

Further to Bill's Review  Gavan Jacob, PERTH
I agree with the comments that Bill has made. It is light, easy to read, has excellent features. One of which is the Daylight Hours, Sun Azimuth and Moon Phazes. Overall a brilliant piece of kit. Very good value for money. It also seems that Wintec are committed to R&D on these, as they are often releasing Firmware Upgrades to improve and add to the functionality of this GPS.

Wintec WSG-1000 G-Trender GPS data logger with LCD and bike-mount reviewed.  Bill Frost, Gordon
The Wintec G-Trender is one of a new breed of sports-orientated GPS devices that tells you at a glance where you are, how fast you are going and how far to your destination, while logging data to a file that can be uploaded to a PC or PDA. Using the included Time Machine X software, you can graph speed, altitude and location over time and display the journey in Google maps together with a moving overlay showing where you were, at what time and what speed. The entire report can be saved in HTML and uploaded to your own web page.

The G-Trender incorporates a GPS receiver, thermometer, barometric altimeter and electronic compass, provides a large LCD (4.6 x 3.4 cm) and uses a standard Nokia battery. It should run for 20 hours (logging only, no display) or over 16 hours with power saving switched off. I've not fully tested this, but I've run it overnight with power management off, for 11 hours without a low battery warning.

Over the years I've used devices that save positional data for subsequent analysis: a $500 Hactronic bike speedo that I somehow managed to lose; a Toshiba PDA with compact flash GPS and OziExplorer (too fragile for serious use); a Globalsat GH-601 with a tiny display that only logged every 30 seconds and the housing cracked where the wrist band attached and a pure logger that records to an SD card but has no visual display. I've been using the G-Trender for a few weeks now and my initial impressions are very good. One of the disadvantages of a pure GPS is that while latitude and longitude are generally highly accurate, height data is less so. Not only does it vary due to satellite correlation issues, but it shows the height above the surface of an idealised sphere. Where I live, this is 20 metres above my actual height. The G-Trender overcomes this by incorporating a barometric altimeter and using it to supplement GPS height data. Altimeters use a temperature - pressure algorithm that in general gives an accu