Is it worth paying to get the PSR-800 optimized?

[clutz]

I know the PSR-800 is a pre-programmed digital scanner so is it worth paying money for a store to set it up and optimized for your local area?

Any feed back is appreciated.

[rocksteady]

Originally Posted by clutz

I know the PSR-800 is a pre-programmed digital scanner so is it worth paying money for a store to set it up and optimized for your local area?

Any feed back is appreciated.

No. You can do that yourself. I can't believe someone actually wants to sell that idea to a consumer.

[bgav]

Originally Posted by clutz

I know the PSR-800 is a pre-programmed digital scanner so is it worth paying money for a store to set it up and optimized for your local area?

Any feed back is appreciated.

In my opinion, no. It's fairly easy to do with the included software and forces you how to learn how to do it as well as learning the features of your scanner.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

[mlmummert]

Originally Posted by clutz

I know the PSR-800 is a pre-programmed digital scanner so is it worth paying money for a store to set it up and optimized for your local area?

Any feed back is appreciated.

Depends on how much money you have. Personally paying someone to open my car door for me is a more useful use of money. I've never done that though.

Serious answer - NO.

[pdfdems286]

you are the one that should know what you want in your scanner. i've never been a proponent of even having my scanners programed by software. like someone else said, it forces you to learn how to program by yourself. you cannot be out in the field and say "hey scannermaster, how do i throw these frequencies into my scanner ?". be as self sufficient as possible. the other part is, i hate paying somebody to do what i can do.

[cherubim]

Originally Posted by pdfdems286

you are the one that should know what you want in your scanner. i've never been a proponent of even having my scanners programed by software. like someone else said, it forces you to learn how to program by yourself. you cannot be out in the field and say "hey scannermaster, how do i throw these frequencies into my scanner ?". be as self sufficient as possible. the other part is, i hate paying somebody to do what i can do.

I'm all for "doing it myself" but seriously, do you really think anyone would enjoy programming a large statewide trunking system with 1000+ talkgroups into a scanner using the front keypad ? That's a recipe for insanity. This is a situation where software is an absolute necessity and not simply a convenience.

[gewecke]

Originally Posted by pdfdems286

you are the one that should know what you want in your scanner. i've never been a proponent of even having my scanners programed by software. like someone else said, it forces you to learn how to program by yourself. you cannot be out in the field and say "hey scannermaster, how do i throw these frequencies into my scanner ?". be as self sufficient as possible. the other part is, i hate paying somebody to do what i can do.

Well said, and exactly my view as well but even more so, I'm not yet convinced that the PSR 800 is worth the money yet because it's too fragile and too prone to failures with it's sd card format and limited ability to field program.

73,
n9zas

[bgav]

Originally Posted by cherubim

I'm all for "doing it myself" but seriously, do you really think anyone would enjoy programming a large statewide trunking system with 1000+ talkgroups into a scanner using the front keypad ? That's a recipe for insanity. This is a situation where software is an absolute necessity and not simply a convenience.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that he do it manually on the scanner itself. The scanner does come with the GRE EZScan software.

Originally Posted by gewecke

Well said, and exactly my view as well but even more so, I'm not yet convinced that the PSR 800 is worth the money yet because it's too fragile and too prone to failures with it's sd card format and limited ability to field program.

Too fragile? It's well made, construction comparable other consumer electronics, but it isn't ruggedized. If you don't take simple precautions, yes, you can corrupt data on the MicroSD card but the same is true of the HomePatrol.

As far as field programming, there isn't a keyboard for direct entry of a frequency. One of the things I do is create a "scratch" bank labeled "INCIDENT" (right below "ALL" in my scanlists) that I add TGs & channels related to an incident into. They can be from existing scanlists or the full database. Pretty quick to do, then I only monitor the INCIDENT scanlist during an incident, and it also makes it easier to turn on recording for those channels/TGs. Then I clear out the INCIDENT scanlist when the incident is over.

This is something fairly easy to do that I learned how to do myself by reading the manual, learning, knowing and understanding the features of my scanner. If someone had preprogrammed it for me I wouldn't understand how scanlists and the Object Oriented memory management works. It's a very powerful and flexible feature once you understand how to take full advantage of it. That only comes by learning it and using it.

The best person to optimize and setup your scanner for your listening habits and preferences is you.