Originally Posted by
2ering
I see njkayaker has already responded to your question re elevation profile/data and my response is the same, yes the unit does show the profile and data. The answer to your second question is too lengthy and boring to go into and really, why does it matter if you need to use the course creator one day or 34? Further, the issues with creating courses were only part of the problems that make, the 1040 at least, completely unsuitable for touring. The unit's suddenly changing the data screens and suddenly forgetting where it was or where it needed to go as when it indicated the next turn was 9363 miles away are as much a problem as the course creator...in my opinion
.
If I'm understanding this correctly, all of these issues are configuration issues that you control. Specifically, the displays changing is all configurable in the system settings. You can have them scan through a set of screens, you can have them switch screens when you start a climb, a segment, approach a turn on your route etc... I've turned all this off on mine which it sounds like you would want too.
The GPS accuracy can be controlled too, there are three settings if I remember correctly that give you various choices/combinations of accuracy vs battery consumption. DCRainmaker goes through all of this is his online reviews and the GPS accuracy of the edge 1040 is pretty much top of class. I'd rate the 1040 as pretty much top of class for touring, not the least of which is its battery life that doesn't need to be charged in days.
In general, the best approach pretty much for any bike computer is generating the route somewhere else and downloading it to the bike computer. When we tour, we either do it on RWGPS on our phone, "pin" the route, and then it downloads instantly to the GPS. Dynamic.watch also has a neat ConnectIQ app for the 1040 called routecourse that allows you to bring up the routes you have as favorites and it downloads them instantly. As long as you have a cell phone, not sure why you'd want to use the bike computer as the route creation tool.
Bottom line, I think you could resolve all of these issues with a little time spent with the manual and some experimentation.