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Leesburg, Ohio | Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I think I understand most of your concerns, especially about vertical grade control, which, while vital to your business, is something that is probably of minor importance to the vast majority of typical farm operations, unless they are doing tile work.
Although we use VR application extensively, I don't get into much of the creation and exporting of special maps myself...I leave that to the consultants we use to create the VR scripts and put them into our system. So I don't really feel your pain around the GRX and APEX vs Op Center issues, but I totally respect what you are saying.
Operations Center, along with automatic data transfer has made our life MUCH easier than it was with APEX. Not sure APEX is even being supported any longer.
And although I cannot make direct cost comparisons, I will say that the Deere system seems to be, for us, by far the best overall in terms of value for what we get out of it in many areas: not only guidance, but more importantly section control (huge cost savings in our odd-shaped fields), ease and accuracy in creating consistent, re-usable guidance lines for multi-pass, season-long, and year-to-year use, automation and ease in data transfer, to name a few. All this, to say we recognize the cost, but feel the return to our investment is the best in the industry, and the best for making life a bit easier (if that's possible in the world of precision ag...)
One of the good things about the Deere system, is the ability to buy the basics, but then not waste those dollars when you decide to add capabilities/features down the road.
I suppose others can do that as well, but I get concerned when people say "I just want cheap guidance". Yes, those systems are out there. But I speak from experience when I say, we literally WASTED tens of thousands of dollars early on in this game by trying to cheap out, and then discovered we had no ability ti use what we bought as a basis for adding additional functionality such as section control...the basic AgLeader and Outback stuff we had did not have those capabilities. So, we had to essentially throw it away (we sold it for a few bucks) and start completely over. Had we spent the seemingly "high dollars" on a basic Deere system at the time, the more complete system we ended up with would have been half paid for. And the worst part was, the cheap stuff was only costing us $, and not returning anything to the bottom line. After we made the change to the so-called "high dollar" Deere system, it was paid for in two years, and has been making us money every year since.
I guess I probably sound like a walking Deere commercial...that is not my intent at all. I think most precision companies probably make good stuff now, so please don't think I am trying to tear down what you are doing...just sharing my perspective....
Thanks again for the response. I always learn something from your posts.
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