it probably already starts searching as soon as the empeg is turned on (i.e. when the remote amp wire becomes active).

In my case, I don't think that's what's happening. The one I've got doesn't have an off or on per se. It has a Li-Ion battery so in theory, it could be on all the time and just be getting charged up whenever I'm supplying it with power. But the instructions for the palm software say something about it shutting down automatically after 90 seconds of inactivity, and that the software can command it to stay on for longer than that. Or something like that, I don't understand it. Perhaps it's got a sensing switch on the power jack and goes into "always on" mode when the jack is plugged in? If that's the case then strange things should happen if I leave it plugged in all the time as it is now. The dox are really sketchy on the subject, I don't know how it's handled. But I got the impression that all on/off commands were "soft" and delivered through the serial port.

I was just assuming that it wasn't powering up until after I launched the GPS app the first time. I could be wrong.

Right hand side is distance to final destination, direction to the next waypoint and distance to the next waypoint. There is a distance/time menu option that changes this to ETE (estimated time elapsed) to final destination, direction and ETE to next waypoint.

Right. What I'm saying is that I couldn't care less about final destination distance or time. All I want is a countdown to the next waypoint, in both time and distance.

And why don't you like the arrow?

It's a very nice arrow (pats on head). I don't need it because I've already got the rubberband option (indicates the same thing) and the screen real estate would be better served with more fun stuff like speed, altitude, or more room for the popup text. If everyone else likes the arrow, that's fine. Make it an option.

It would be hard to scroll the actual NMEA messages because by the time I update the screen, I'm working with something more like a summary of the data I got from parsing the messages.

Ah well, no big deal, it would kinda be just eye candy. And only useful for receivers like mine where you sit there and wonder if it's even working at all.

I don't understand how GPS receivers work, and I'm curious: What's the difference between a gray hollow bar and a solid white bar on the satellite screen?

Ofcourse we do need some space on the screen to visualize that the knob works for volume

Now that I know you can use the remote to control the player app, I've changed my mind and would rather see the knob do what it currently does which is scroll through the list of waypoints. Works well for that.