Russell Patterson wrote:
Those of you that complain about thievery can maybe answer this
conundrum:
Garmin XT for PDAs is sold by Garmin only on a 2GB micro SD card. They
state on their web site:
"Note: Due to proprietary and security reasons, it is not possible to
transfer your Garmin Mobile XT data to a larger card."
They do not offer it in a larger SD card. So my question is this: If
you purchase the 2GB card and through other means available that
someone has posted on the internet, copy it to a larger SD card, would
that also be stealing?
I would do that in a heartbeat without having any qualms about the
legality if I were working to meet my personal needs and standards of
satisfaction.
Copying my legally owned version of Garmin XT to a larger card to meet
my personal requirements for storing additional data for Garmin XT or
data for other applications that are sharing the card simply lets me get
on with life. And, to some extent, it compensates for either a lack of
foresight on Garmin's part or some level of technical incompetence in
Garmin's software development.
For Garmin to not understand that it is not realistic for users to want
to allow a single card to occupy the only available expansion memory
slot, and thereby block all further use of expanded memory on the
device, is pretty stupid programming on Garmin's part.
And what would be even stupider would be for Garmin to pursue the
legality of a person doing it they owned a legal copy of Garmin XT. I
mean Garmin has made the profit from the sale, and it costs them nothing
to ignore the fact that people are finding work arounds to counter
Garmin's lack of foresight.
Garmin has a long history of being generally ignorant as to how their
products are actually used and do not seem to base any software fixes or
designs on the needs and desires of their customer base. They develop
their products in a communications vacuum that seems to exclude even the
other components of their own organization. And that sucks!
Jack
