My Experience: Upgrading to Polar CS600 w/power and MAC OS (INTEL)

Ckennel

I am posting this in hopes that it might help other CS600/Mac users down the road. I didn't find any posts addressing recent Mac Experiences so I have listed mine below. I have been a bit frustrated over the years at the lack of mac support but I think more and more options are coming now that Macs run ont he same processors. I do love being able to run either my Mac OS or XP or Linux on the same box. That is cool.

Old Gear:
Polar 625X with power meter on Calfee Road bike

Experience with Old Power Meter:

• Bike Mount - I always hated the watch mount and it was a drag changing from Road to Mtn. the CS200/400/600 design is much easier but doesn't cater to runners/tri peeps. I have some FSA flat surface handlebars and the Polar watch mount never seemed to fit nicely. "Wonky" is the best way to explain it.
• Power Meter - I honestly feel Polar launched their old Power Meter way before it was ready for prime time. It didn't have the same quality as the previous Polar products I had been using. Install takes forever if you do it properly and even then it is a ton of cable runs. The Manuals are a joke and I will just leave it at that. The infamous "2MM" of space between the Chain and the power meter at all times is frankly not possible in all gears. This is well documented in many forums.
• Reliability - The unit did work but I had to send it in 3x for repair in 2 years. The 3rd time I told them to just keep it because I was so fed up with it not working and the laborious installs. When it was working, it worked okay but occassionally had spikes or woudln't register without repeated restarts.
• Data Transfer to Polar Precision Pro V3 & V4 - I work on a Mac and I used to have to utilize my PC at work to do the transfers. I had the USB IR adapter and it worked as promised. When I upgraded to the Intel Mac Book Pro I could only get my Polar IR device to work under Bootcamp and not Parallels (SIDENOTE: Bootcamp is Software Apple makes to allow an Intel Mac to boot into either MacOSX or Windows - Parallels is 3rd Party emulation software that is really easy to use and you don't have to physically reboot your machine. You can operate both OS's at the same time under OSX. It is not great for games and video in PC mode but excellent for Office Apps or Polar Apps). I really wanted to use Parallels to transfer my cycling data but I could never get the Polar IR device to work despite several tech emails and calls to the Parallels folks. V3 of Parallels still does not work.

New Gear:
Polar 600CS with power on Calfee
Why Polar?
I went with Polar because I received a decent discount when I bought my CS600 and I do like the display options on the 600. It gives me everything I need and I already have a ton of Polar related straps and accessories. I do think the Ergomo or the SRM are probably better power meters but I couldn't justify the expense and I am not a turbo racer. I just like riding. if money were no option, I probably would have bought something else. I also wish I could add power to my Mtn bike but the CS600 does not officially work with Mtn bikes. I am sure I could rig something up but I think the 2MM distance between chain and chainstay becomes a deal breaker along with the mud and water of Mtn Biking.

Install and User Experience with New Power Meter:

• Bike Mount - Bike mount is much easier to use. I love it. I wish someone would develop a lightweight adapter/watch for those times when I want to run but I mainly ride so I think the stem mount is perfect. I don't have to mount anything on the handlebars and that is great.
• Power Meter - The power meter has totally been redone with the CS600 and it is much better.

• Wireless Features: It connects much faster than the old Polar system when you are starting a ride and the wireless features have resulted in about 50% less cable wrangling. That is huge. Install is much easier. You still struggle with the "2mm" issue and when i am in my 53 front and my 23/25 in the back, the chain is almost 2 inches (Not 2 mm's) away from the receiver. It still works but my guess is that it is not as accurate. I don't use that combo that often so it's okay.
• Cadence Setup: When i set up the CS600 with power I kept getting errors that no cadence sensor was found and this was very frustrating. I could set up the power option ok but cadence couldn't be found. I never figured it out but my guess is that because Cadence is built into the power meter, you actually don't have to teach cadence when setting it up. I could be wrong but I was never able to get the cadence to be recognized but my cadence shows up fine on my rides. Polar should have noted this in the manual.
• Install on Mtn bike - When I went to install the Speed Sensor and the Cadence sensor on my Mtn Bike, I had no issues at all "teaching" the Polar to recognize those 2 sensors. I did have cadence and speed on my mtn bike but i had to buy all new sensors because the CS600 uses a different transmission protocol. The old sensors do not work. The new ones are pricey at about $54 each.
• Cadence sensor placement for the power meter: Because you have to have your power meter installed exactly in the center of your right chain stay, I had to put my pedal magnet for the cadence sensor at the very end of my crank. It was actually even with the pedal spindle. I ended up gluing a different magnet on my pedal because tape wouldn't work because of the pedal being in the way.
• Data Transfer: I was hoping that my old USB IR adapter would somehow start working with the new CS600 but it didn't. I had to go buy a new IRDA sensor. You can buy any irda device but I ended up spending way too much on the new Polar USB 2.0 IRDA sensor. It is nice and quite small but at $60 it better be good. I am happy to report that the New Polar USB adapter DOES work just fine under Parallels. Yeehaw! All I had to do was switch the hardware from USB to IRDA in the options portion of the Polar software. Transfer speeds are much faster which is great because under the old system I had to walk away while my data transferred. The Polar software GUI has also been updated and it looks a little more slick. Stll room for improvement. I was also happy that communicating with the CS600 unit is very easy and they have upgraded this user interface as well. You can set all your preferences for the unit from within the software and it is much faster than trying to do it manually on the unit itself. You could cmmunicate with the Polar wrist unit in the past but often times settings were forgotten ("Auto lap off" for example) no matter how many times you set them.

That is all I have for the moment. I am very happy with the CS600 and I am psyched I don't have to reboot my Mac into PC Mode everytime I want to transfer data.

If I left anything out just email and i would be happy to answer any questions. I am not an active forum user but I thought this info might be helpful to some.

Christian
Santa Monica, CA