Garmin GPS - Newbie: Maps - Help Me Simplify

Author

Newbie: Maps - Help Me Simplify

Larix Laricina

2007-08-16, 10:33 pm

Background: I have a Vista Cx that I use primarily for trail and road
biking, with a little geocaching and canoeing thrown in. Had it for over a
year and can use the unit more or less fine. In conjunction with it I'm
using, for better or - mostly - worse, DeLorme Topo 6.0 on my PC. I download
tracks from the unit, display and edit them on the PC. So far so good.

What I did not understand when I bought the thing is that it's basically a
device to get you to buy expensive software to put on it. Let's assume for
the moment that I'm prepared to pay the $100+ that it apparently costs to
load a decent set of map data into the thing. (I may decided I'm not,
depending on the responses to this post.) Here's my question: What software
can I buy that basically amounts to putting the DeLorme (paper) road atlases
for New England - or their equivalent - onto the unit itself? When I am
riding in an area, I want to be able to see ALL the roads with their names,
down to the most insignificant rural roads and lanes. In addition, it would
be great also to have some degree of detail on physical features - hills,
streams, lakes, etc. Currently, with the stock software, all I get is
Interstates and major routes and no topo info at all. I have spent a LONG
time looking on the Garmin site at all the "Map Source" products and I still
cannot figure out which one, if any, will answer this purpose. Can I use any
other company's software? Preferably software from a company that's not
going to charge me $140 for it? Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
- Tony

peter

2007-08-17, 4:33 am

Larix Laricina wrote:
> Here's my question: What software
> can I buy that basically amounts to putting the DeLorme (paper) road atlases
> for New England - or their equivalent - onto the unit itself? When I am
> riding in an area, I want to be able to see ALL the roads with their names,
> down to the most insignificant rural roads and lanes. In addition, it would
> be great also to have some degree of detail on physical features - hills,
> streams, lakes, etc.

Nothing quite matches what you're asking for above. My recommendation
would be to start with City Navigator-NA, 2008. That'll give you
essentially all the roads (incl. rural ones despite the product name)
and in most cases I've been happier with its road coverage than I have
been with DeLorme's. It also has lots of POIs, some of which have
been useful when road biking (such as finding nearby food sources and
bike shops), and it supports automatic route generation. It also has
reasonable coverage of streams and lakes but not as good as a topo
map. However, it won't include contour lines showing elevation. To
get that you have some choices: get a second Garmin product (US Topo),
continue to make do with separate external maps for the elevation
information, or add the elevation data yourself to the City Navigator
maps. The procedure for doing the latter is available at:
http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm
That's the cheapest route since the data is free, and it's also the
most complete and accurate - giving you better contour line data than
either the DeLorme maps you're using now or Garmin's US Topo. But it
is a rather involved process to create the maps.

So I'd start with City Navigator and then decide if adding the contour
elevation lines is worth the effort and/or expense.

Larix Laricina

2007-08-17, 10:33 pm

Great. Thank you. :-)

You were right: I was definitely gun-shy about the "City" part of the
software title.

"peter" <prathman@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1187340862.941526.65770@m37g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> Larix Laricina wrote:
>
> Nothing quite matches what you're asking for above. My recommendation
> would be to start with City Navigator-NA, 2008. That'll give you
> essentially all the roads (incl. rural ones despite the product name)
> and in most cases I've been happier with its road coverage than I have
> been with DeLorme's. It also has lots of POIs, some of which have
> been useful when road biking (such as finding nearby food sources and
> bike shops), and it supports automatic route generation. It also has
> reasonable coverage of streams and lakes but not as good as a topo
> map. However, it won't include contour lines showing elevation. To
> get that you have some choices: get a second Garmin product (US Topo),
> continue to make do with separate external maps for the elevation
> information, or add the elevation data yourself to the City Navigator
> maps. The procedure for doing the latter is available at:
> http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm
> That's the cheapest route since the data is free, and it's also the
> most complete and accurate - giving you better contour line data than
> either the DeLorme maps you're using now or Garmin's US Topo. But it
> is a rather involved process to create the maps.
>
> So I'd start with City Navigator and then decide if adding the contour
> elevation lines is worth the effort and/or expense.
>

LinkBot