In order to set the heart rate training zones on my Garmin Edge 500 bicycling computer, I have to set the zones on my Garmin Connect account and then send the zones to the device. Garmin Connect lets me set zones for the default, for running, and for bicycling. I only use the device for bicycling, so I ignored the other two and set the three heart rate zones that I use for bicycling. Then I clicked the “Send to device” link, and got this error message:

Your device can only accept 5 HR zones.

I found that odd. “Perhaps,” I thought, “it can only accept five total.” So I deleted the default and running HR zones. Again with the error message. It took me a while to realize that the message was saying that I had to have exactly five zones for each of the activities.

Forget for the moment the idiocy of creating software that can’t deal with fewer than the maximum number of zones. Forget also the idiocy of not fixing that in one of their many firmware updates. They could have at least provided a more explicit error message such as, “Your device requires you to enter exactly five HR zones.”

Why is it that hardware manufacturers have such a difficult time with software?