I'm a noob who just acquired a Galileo Luno...

[diver2005]

im surprised you've bought some pretty good gear even before doing OW....hope you'll love diving and enjoy your gear!!

 

[jonhall]

In regards to reading the manual (I purchased the Suunto Cobra,) I had to download and/or print it although there was a getting started manual with basic info in the box.

Don't know that your brand will have it, but Suunto has an app that I put on my iPhone. It has tutorial videos on everything about the computer. Found it to be very helpful.

 

[kelemvor]

You've obviously dove both, so I'm sincere in asking...what exactly is more intuitive about it? The only thing I've found that's more clearly laid out and easy to navigate than a Petrel is a Cobalt, and that's skipping over the weird gas switching rules on the Cobalt.

There are some things about the Petrel that either have their subtle significance buried in the manual (like why is my gas selection suddenly yellow?) or are features I didn't even catch after reading the manual closely (like wait, I can go to Dive Planning during a dive and see all currently called for stops?!)...but in terms of just setting it up and diving it, the OC-Tec Petrel seemed a lot easier to navigate to me than the SP computers. I've never tried the OC-Rec version, but it's got to be even simpler. If one were to leave it in CC/OC, or fail to learn how gradient factors work, then the Petrel becomes a more confusing beast to be sure. But I'm not sure I equate more simplistic conservatism with more intuitive...and there's always VPM.

It's a matter of user friendliness. Galileo has three large buttons on top of the unit. There are "soft" labels on the main display that tell you what each button does almost all the time. There are a few places down in submenus where uwatec skipped the labels. I don't know why, perhaps a mistake by a dev. In any event, this makes operation of the computer so straightforward that there are very few features you'll need to have read the manual in order to use. There are some, hence my indication previously in the thread. There just aren't very many. The display is also utilized better in some situations. What I mean by that is they use fewer abbreviations, and more words spelled out. Fewer chances for misunderstanding by a less versed operator.

There's more need to read the manual with petrel. In part because of the increased technical features, but also because in my opinion there are lots of abbreviations. I'm sure I'll get used to the two button operation in time, but for now I often find myself missing a submenu and having to cycle back through the options a second time to get back where I was headed.


I'll use the gas selection turning yellow as an example here. Both computers have a full dot matrix type of display. With galileo if you have a better gas, the display will say "SWITCH TO GAS XX" with xx indicating the gas you should switch to. You don't have to read the manual to know the computer is telling you that you should switch gasses. Shearwater could have done something like this. Instead you have to remember that particular nuance of petrel's operation.

Here's an example:


You can also model deco stops for each available gas. Those screens are a little less user friendly. I guess because of the quantity of data which must be displayed and available real estate. Here's examples:




Notice at the top of all these images you see the soft labels for each button.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

I find small-text cluttered displays far less useful when diving, but if you're just learning the computer I can see your point. I do think most of the Petrel's menus are soft-labeled re: what the left and right buttons do, though.