Garmin GPS - Where to get data for eTrex Vista Cx?

Author

Where to get data for eTrex Vista Cx?

Cartwheels

2006-05-26, 11:48 pm

Is Garmin Mapsource or preloaded SD cards the only way to add topo or road
data in my new eTrex?

Can anyone recommend any third party sources or enlighten me on this
subject?

Thanks

Peter Headland

2006-05-26, 11:48 pm

Garmin has things locked down so you have to buy everything from them.
No way to get anything useful from 3rd parties (except official Garmin
mapping partners in some non-US markets). It's the same for all of the
manufacturers. Can anyone spell "monopoly"?

--
Peter Headland

Joel

2006-05-26, 11:48 pm

>Is Garmin Mapsource or preloaded SD cards the only way to add topo or road
>data in my new eTrex?
>
>Can anyone recommend any third party sources or enlighten me on this
>subject?
>
>Thanks
>

I already had an Ique 3600 which came with City Select V6. Garmin
allows you to have two unlock codes for each product so I was able to
get an unlock code for the etrex for free. Prior to the etrex and
iQue I owned a GPS III+ and back in 1999 I purchased a copy of
Mapsource Topo which works with everything. In fact, a few months
ago, I decided to copy it to my hard disk and some files would not
read from the CDs. I called Garmin and they had me send them the CDs
and the mailed me a brand new set of Topo (the newer version from
2002, v3.02) and again no charge. Then I upgraded to City Select V7
at the standard $50 upgrade price and again, got two unlock sets - one
for the iQue and one for the etrex.

So while only Garmin software will run on the etrex (not so for the
iQue which is palm based), Garmin has been pretty nice to me lately
and I am a happy camper.

By the way, you can by a sd card and software seperately and load it
yourself. I purchased a 512 MB transflash card and loaded City Select
for all of Texas, CO, UT, NM, AZ, and Ca (below SF) and also all the
topos for those areas and still had memory left. The only downside
are things take a real long time with all that data. And be careful,
these transflash cards are getting to be almost as small as contact
lenses - easy to misplace.

Joel

Mike P

2006-05-29, 5:48 pm

On Fri, 26 May 2006 15:46:59 -0500, "Cartwheels" <please@me.com>
wrote:

... >Is Garmin Mapsource or preloaded SD cards the only way to add topo or road
... >data in my new eTrex?
... >
... >Can anyone recommend any third party sources or enlighten me on this
... >subject?
... >
... >Thanks
... >

You can get free contour only maps for the UK here

http://www.smc.org.uk/contour_maps2.htm

Mike P

Posesjusz

2006-05-30, 5:48 pm

LinkBot