The DeLorme Weblog

Update: 2010/07/16 at 7:14 am

Good news… SPOT received their FCC certification paperwork last night so we are good to go with offering the PN-60 w SE for sale now with the SPOT unit to follow later in August when available.

As communicated in my blog posts, DeLorme customers who have signed up will be notified via email today with a link that will lead them to a total of $150 in savings for this combination product. We are doing this in part to thank many of you for your patience while we have been waiting for the SPOT cert to come through.

This way you can step up to the SE model with 16-GB of internal memory now and then later when available receive a SPOT unit shipped at our expense with a total savings amount that equals the cost of the SPOT unit when sold alone. It’s a great offer and only available for existing DeLorme customers as part of our loyalty program, especially given that supplies are genuinely limited (I know everyone always says this but it is true).

You can also call us at 800-561-5105 if you prefer over email and our East Coast call center opens at 9 AM this morning to help you.

Our supply of SE units is smaller than I had hoped but we do have more being produced now. Anyone who signed up to be notified will be eligible for this introductory offer through this summer and then we will need to see how inventories are looking and plan from there out.

We have recently received some very exciting news about this product combination, some involving a major tech celebrity who will be using it soon and others involving prestigious advance award notifications, which we hope will come to fruition. (Amazon has already named it one of the Top Tech Products of the Year.)

This is truly a fun and fascinating new product pairing based on my own experiences and we are all excited and feel like we are on the cusp of seeing the rewards of our labors. This has been one of those rare stretch projects where two teams (DeLorme plus SPOT) had to work together with a great deal of complex technologies and boil them all down into a product that many people will be able to enjoy.

So thanks again for your patience and I will continue to provide updates here so you know how supplies and timings are looking as we continue down the road.

p.s. I imagine Chip will make a post or two but he is getting ready to go on a private climb with the top editors of Backpacker who are eager to see it all work and report back from remote locations. We also are a sponsor of the Boy Scouts’ 100-year Jamboree and will have many people there running GPS and geocaching sessions. We also will be attending the Midwest Geobash this summer.

CMason
DeLorme Staff

PN-60w and SPOT Communicator: Question and Answer…
Published: Jan 19, 2010

There have been a lot of great questions posted since our announcement at CES: DeLorme and SPOT—Handheld GPS Meets Satellite Communication. I’ve gone through our blog, our forum, and a few other locations writing answers and providing more detail. Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all the information, so I thought I’d bring the answers back here to our blog to keep everyone informed.

Differences between the PN-40, PN-60, and PN-60w…

• All the devices in the PN-Series line are built with the same form factor so don’t worry about your existing mounts, batteries, cables, or other accessories—they’ll still work.
• The PN-Series devices all use the same screen and the same GPS chipset so expect the same daylight readability and fast acquisition times.
• The PN-60 and PN-60w have an ambient light sensor to control the screen backlight and help with power management.
• The PN-60 and PN-60w have 3.5 GB of internal memory compared to the 500 MB in the 40.
• A PN-60wse to be sold directly from DeLorme will offer 8.0 16.0 GB of internal memory.
• Improvements have been made increasing processor speed and USB transfer rates.
• The PN-60w is the only device with a wireless antenna and the ability to connect to the SPOT Communicator.

Read the rest of this entry »