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I didn't say that REI was the cheapest place. It's just where she should go with 2 days left to shop. She can get good advice there and walk out with her GPSr(s).

Go to REI and buy one eTrex Legend or 2 eTrex Yellows. Hard to share when they don't live together. You make that call.

The Meridian series uses VMG, or Velocity Made Good, to calcualte the ETA. In other words, if you are going 60 mph at an angle to the direct line of sight and your VMG is 30 mph, it will estimate your ETA as 2 hours out from a 60 mile distant destination. parkrrr - I knew that math didn't sound right, but I knew what I thought I meant when I said it. Edited above is what I think I really meant.

Thanks, fizzymagic. Looks handy! :

Version 4.03 is available on the Yahoo site, v4.02 is available on the Magellan site. Version 4.05 is also available on the Yahoo site, but after reading the posts on Yahoo, I would not recommend it. I have downloaded and installed v4.03 on 2 different MeriGreens, and it works fine. Here's a quote from the Yahoo discussions: I know there has been a lot of talk around here about the new 5.12 firmware for the Gold/plat/marine, direct route and the like. Im enjoyin my marine w/5.12, its great. However, there has been a lot of confusion and the like about the base GPS. I have put 4.02/.03/.05 in my yellow and from what I can tell 4.03 seemed to be the best. Im thinking of going back, if this doesnt clear up with reload. Things Ive noticed with 4.05: 1: Speed seems less acurate, like it updates slower. 2: Higher epe on average 3: chicken tracks worse than ever 4: poor sat lock, attaining and holding 5: general sluginshness and slingshot dealie more noticeable.

As has been mentioned, Mapsend Topo works great for this.

Only Mapsend software can be loaded onto your Meridian, so just get the Topo version and you'll be all set. The larger the map file you load onto your card, the longer it will take to refresh the map screen, and it will take longer to boot up, also. You can load several different maps on the card with a card reader, and switch between them. After you get the software, just play with the map sizes to get what you want.

Try searching this forum. There are links in here somewhere to download an upgrade for your software, and it's free. I looked it up for you: Here it is.

I picked up some Micro writeguards at Fry's (cheap) and cut one to fit my Merigreen. It probably resulted in a 50% degradation of the image readability. In addition, it took a lot of work to get the screen clean after removing the film. I would suggest avoiding this brand. What brands have others found that work well?

I have used a MMC card in a Merigreen without any problem. Of course, I wasn't going off-road on a mountain bike either.

quote: Does the size of a region uploaded into ones MeriPlat (on an SD card, or course) affect how long it takes to draw the map on the GPSr screen? Based on my conversations with Magellan technical support - and my experience - the answer is "yes". Magellan said that best results are obtained by keeping the detail map size to 32mb maximum. Any larger than that, the map redrawing on the Meridian screen takes noticebly longer. I have observed this both on intial loading when turning the GPSr on, and when scrolling across the map and redrawing is required. When a smaller detail map is active (say 8mb vs 32mb), the response time is much quicker.

I recently walked a creek that crosses our property and then saved the track to my memory card. I was in the Auto Detailed mode, and my MeriGreen saved 29 trackpoints in 1956 feet, or one about every 67 feet. In Custom .01 mode, I guess it would have saved 37 trackpoints, one every 53 feet. One thing to remember is that the capacity of the unit is 2000 trackpoints, or about 20 miles in the .01 mode.

Like phantom4099 said - try changing the NMEA setting in Setup. That's what I had to do in order for my MeriGreen to work with MapSend Topo on my laptop. I didn't know what the setting was supposed to be, so I just "trial and errored" until it worked.

brianmcm, If you haven't opened the Streets software yet, you might want to return it. The Topo software has all the same street info, just the POI data is different. And the Streets POI info is supposedly out-of-date, according to several postings.

Outpost.com no longer lists this unit. I think they have all been shipped to the stores for close out. The Fry's stores in each market have different items on sale at any given time. Your best bet is to watch your local ads for the sale price - which is usually $99. Soon they will all be gone, and the MeriGold will be the entry level Meridian. Hmmm - maybe you shouldn't wait, $149 is not a bad price. Especially if you are getting software - there is still a valid $50 rebate if you buy both.

Yes, it is evidently being discontinued, but that doesn't mean it's not a good unit. Seethis discussion. Fry's keeps running this on sale for $99, if you have one nearby. It's $99 in DFW this weekend.

That's just another one of those free bonuses that Magellan is famous for!

Oh, come on now. How many times do you need to put in a foreign city as a GoTo?

MapSend Topo.

Yes. Just hold down the GoTo button, and then modify the coordinates when the screen pops up. Give it a name, etc. and save it and there you go!

I have exactly the same setup and upgraded to 4.03 a few weeks back in an effort to solve a detail map problem. It didn't help, but I have not noticed any difference in the performance - positive or negative. For example, the "chicken foot" (or whatever it's called) problem still exist on tracks. I think there are some new features, but can't recall using any.

Max, It could be that I won't be trying multi-region maps anymore either! And clearing the memory is not a viable alternative. I did that once (didn't help) and it took a lot longer to reset all my preferences than plugging my sd card into the reader to download another map. The only downside with single-region maps that I can think of, was experienced by me yesterday when I was returning from Tulsa to Dallas. I had my home as the destination waypoint, and when I left the OK map and had to load the NorthTX map from the sd card, all my waypoints were lost! I had to reload my waypoints from the card also.

Art, I'm pretty sure that this parameter has to do with creating a multi-region map. I have tested my problem with 6 single-region maps and 1 four-region map and 1 2-region map, all on the card at the same time. No problem switching to and between single-region maps, but cannot switch to either multi-region map. Both multi-region maps work fine when they are the original detail map.

On the Map screen, zoom all the way out, then move your cursor over to Russia. Zoom in until the cities show up (200 mi scale on my MeriGreen). Locate Moscow, press (or hold down) the GOTO button, and there you are - 5739 miles from Garland, TX.

UPDATE: "Invalid file" message when attempting to switch detail maps on card: I have narrowed the problem down, but don't yet have a "fix". Also, I have been in contact with another geocacher who has experienced the same problem. It seems that we cannot switch to a "multi-region" map image file, but we can switch to a "single-region" image file. If a multi-region file is the current detail map, we can switch only to a single-region map, and cannot switch back to the (previously valid) multi-region map. A multi-region map can be read if it is the only image file on the card, if it was the detail map prior to adding additional maps, or if it happens to be the one selected automatically when powering up the GPSr after loading several image files on the card at the same time. This has now been observed on 3 different sd cards, on three different Meridian GPSr's, and using at least two different firmware versions. Anyone have a solution? By the way, Magellan tech support has been contacted via e-mail. Awaiting response.