I've got a Vista HCx just like that, I didn't think they've been around long enough to run out of warranty. I'm not surprised Garmin took care of you, I'm on about my 6th Garmin, I live by them. Actually, 11 if you count the 4 airplanes in my flying club (the Cirrus has 2).

I love the "H" part of the HCx- I had the original Vista, and it would lose signal with a moderate tree cover, and would rarely pick up a signal on the top floor of a wood house. My HCx never loses signal when I go jogging, and can often pick up a good signal on the ground floor of my 2 story house.

Yes GoatRider, the warranty expired a month ago but they did me good, I sent it off last week and the HCX is been my favorite unit so far. Lots of potential and it performed flawless electronically on the trip with a killer battery life.

Wow that was fast, Garmin took my old HCX (1 year and 1 month old) out of warranty and gave me a brand new one with all the new software updated plus they gave me new unlock codes for the maps I had on the unit. They have definitely impressed me with fast turnaround and honoring a problem out of warranty. Many thanks to Garmin and you guys were right about them making things right. Five stars *****.

Sent Aug 19 2008
Received new one Aug 27 2008
10 days and some of that was from the mail travel.

Garmin has a well deserved reputation in the long distance motorcycle riding community for taking care of their customers. I sent them a Street Pilot GPS unit several years ago that was well out of warranty, not only did they fix it promptly, they paid to ship it back to me and sent me a nice letter along with it.

Best GPS company that I know of. That's why I now own 3 of their units.

John E

I agree JohnE, I have 3 as well, Emap,etrex,nuvi and I'm looking really hard at the Oregon, the brightness on the screen is really bad and I'm hoping there will be some fix or another model with better brightness. I will definitely be upgrading mine in the not so far future, I came real close to getting the Oregon but it's hard for me to see in the sun, so I'll have to wait and see what comes down the pipe. I did however let Garmin know about the screen brightness problems and I know it will be very difficult for them to correct this in a post production environment, so I'm hoping for another Oregon series 500 for example with brighter screen. I'll sacrifice the battery life for a brighter screen, I recharge and solar power anyway so battery life is not a major issue as long as I have sun light.

I'm glad they have done you right JohnE and they are definitively a good company.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=14903

I think I'm going to put the Garmin Oregon 400t on my christmas list.