GPS watches and me: the Nike GPS watch - stay away

I am a self confessed gadget freak. I love them but they need to actually work. I have many and most of them I really like. My BB 9900 and Playbook for example are really good, my Macbook is fantastic.

I have been running for a few years now and wanted to get more techy data sometimes I feel a bit like Sheldon but there you go.... I tried to use my 9900 to do this but its to heavy and I didnt like carrying my phone. Partly because its heavy

I had a look at loads and finally plumped for the Nike GPS watch because I use the website and already have loads of data there. Another reason was indeed because its was much cheaper than the Garmin ones.

So my first impressions were good, it has a screen large enough for me to see with my middle aged rubbish vision - I run with my old glasses on which are not exactly strong enough but as long as I miss the cars I'm fine..... but then I got to use it and was less impressed.

The GPS is from TomTom which should mean that it works, on the whole it doesnt. I am amazed at how long it can take to get a fix on my position - it that works at all. I run in the same area all the time and it can take more than 5 minutes to fix my position. This is just rubbish. Even if I stand still it often doesn't manage to find me. Once everything is connected- then its OK but the GPS location is very very bad. It utterly fails to impress. Then I managed to drop it but as the watch is for outdoors I had expected a stronger screen. My screen now has a pretty crack in it. If you make anything meant to be used outdoors in a sporty environment is it not supposed to be strong enough to handle this?

I also have a Polar heart rate monitor watch which, you will not be surprised, has been on the floor a few times and is just perfect.

I think I got what I paid for  - my Nike was half the price of the Polar and Garmin GPS watches but not worth the money. I should have bought either of them.

TomTom seem to have created their own sports watch - I would be very reluctant to chance it. I hope someone does a demo concentrating on the build quality, GPS location and ease of use (for lefthanders)

Waterrower machine fails on monitors

Further down in my (few) posts you will see that I bought a Waterrower indoor rowing machine a year ago. As a rowing machine its great, as a monitor its rubbish.

We have had issues with the monitor from the start. It stops monitoring your progress, the screen goes blank, it stops, its goes to 0.0 etc etc . We have had the measuring disc replaces by the shop where we bought the thing and finally in December it went back to Waterrower themselves where they replaced the monitor. I had hoped they would have checked everything out but when it came back ( a month later) the problem is still there.

I find this just ridiculous. The machine itself costs over 2000EUR and the monitor is just rubbish. If I had bought a cheaper machine - and there are many- I would be less concerned but this is the supposed top of the range indoor home rower! and its just not fit for purpose.

The competition is the Concept 2  a machine we decided not to buy because the Waterrower was better looking and took up less space.

I advise Waterrower to get their act together regarding the monitor - if you offer a system with this feature, it must work. They say you can go online and row against others- that is also a nightmare. The Concept 2 online community is huge, waterrowers hardly exists. I don't really want to go online, but I would like to record what I do on my laptop. This is possible, only for Windows! (I have a Mac). I did use it on an old PC but even the Windows software is described as Beta and is horribly clunky, complicated and little use. It looks like it was made for Win95.

All in all I dont know if I would recommend a Waterrower anymore. I love the rowing experience, I hate the electronics which just dont live up to the promise at all. It seems like this lack of IT savvy is over the entire company - their websites are also rubbish. Try looking at the online shops in different European countries for a laugh.

OK rant over

Water Rower - get on the case PLEASE you have a great machine which fails on one feature. Fix this and it will be fantastic.