Rubberhead

I've had my 60CS for about 17 months. I'm starting to think, "boy, I wish my GPSmap 60CS had a MP3 player", or "it would be nice if it played 'Lord of the Rings' off of an SD card". I guess it is a pretty complete GPS unit if I'm wishin' it had an MP3 player too. PS: Yeah, Yeah, I know Lowrance units have MP3 players.

I had a Mariner with POI (just a Venture with a white housing) as primary device for about a year. I found it useful for boating since POI has a marine section. I also found landmarks and Business very helpful. The only downside is that POI really pointed out to me how helpful mapping could be. It wasn't long before I "needeed" a unit with mapping. You can fit about 48,000 square miles of landmarks into the 1 MB of Venture memory.

In the old days it took days to locate areas where ducks were feeding in the twisted coastal marshes that don't have much in the way of trees or other landmarks. Even if I could draw a bearing with a compass by the time I rode through the winding creeks, I'd be lost. Anyway, now I use sight-n-go and draw two bearings to where I'm seeing ducks in the air. Right were the lines cross - the ducks. It's easy as pie.

Reset the max speed after you get a good satellite lock and you won't have a problem. The max speed problems occur most often when a GPS is first getting a lock and the error goes from 200 feet to 17 feet in a second. (200 - 17)/1 = 183 feet per second which is roughly 125 miles per hour. I travel to hunt and fish alot so I've been using my GPSmap 60CS as an alarm clock that always has the right time. I've never had it let me down.

GPS 38 -> Camo eTrex -> eTrex Mariner -> eTrex Legend -> eTrex Vista -> GPSmap 60CS (finally happy)

I've bought 2 GPS units, a fishfinder and several volumes of Mapsource from http://www.chartedwaters.com without any complaints. Note: I have no financial interest in the above website whatsoever.

Compass and Altimeter too. The suggested retail price of the 530 is exactly the same as the GPSmap 60CS.

I must caution for you to be very careful when in your registry. You could easily mess up a lot more than just Mapsource. There is an Export function in Regedit.exe so it is a good idea to make a backup before doing anything with your registry. Still be careful because you can mess things up enough that you won't even be able to launch Windows. A backup is worthless if things get that messed up.

This isn't going to be of much help, but I've got Mapsource running on XP Home Edition, XP Media Edition and at work on an XP Professional edition. I don't think XP is your problem. I would guess that it's something else. When you edit the registry there is some information kept under HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Garmin and some under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/Garmin. Make sure that you delete both of these to completely clean your registry of Garmin information. Mapsource settings are stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Garmin in the registry so I'd bet that is something is corrupted and causing problems, it would be here and not under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

I just change the batteries with the unit powered from hardwired connection. I haven't had to recalibrate in a year.

I think he was talking about these: D005800A-Worldwide City POI Database — 1.0 (August 4, 2005) D00590XA-Marine POI Database — 1.0 (August 4, 2005) not this POI Loader — 2.0 (July 29, 2005)

I think they are updates for the cities/marine POI databases that come pre-installed on the new units. To my understanding there is now way to layer those udpates with maps or POIs installed through MapSource. I could be wrong.

You are trying to rationalize a purely emotional decision like a color GPS. just go for it, Man.

I know that's a real issue for a lot of user but 56MB has been fine for me. I can basically keep all of Metroguide and Fishing Hotspots data within a three hour radius of my house in addition so the Bluecharts for all of coastal SC. (The bluecharts don't take up much space, maybe 4 MB). I'm taking a 300+ mile trip south this weekend so I has to load up a different mapset but USB is pretty quick so it wasn't too much of a bother.

All I can say is that, like most GPSmap 60CS owners, I love my GPSmap 60CS.

I've hardwared both a 7-pin and 4-pin Garmin connector to both of my boats. It works like a champ. The regulator is located in the GPS unit so you can feed 12VDC directly into a GPSmap 60©(S). Note: This does not work with the black-and-white or the color eTrex units.

First of all, some of the Magellan units will assume you continue moving at the same velocity and direction even if they actually loose reception. This was part of the reason that they have a better reputation for better reception. Getting back to your question. I have a 60CS and feel that it's a little on the big side, I would feel like a 76CS would be a little too big. I don't have a problem with the memory in the 60CS but seldom travel more than about 200 miles from my home.

You can try www.gpsgeek.com too. Like timpat said, the cable is well worth the price since you can download/up waypoints, tracks and routes.

I know I'm not answering the question that was asked, but... The additional features of the GPSmap 60C(S) are worth the price premium. 500 more waypoints 32 MB more memory Better battery life and lets not forget the beautiful color screen. However, I believe that the GPSmap 60 has a better basemap than the C(S).

There are a couple of interesting trends that seem to be foreshadowed in Garmin's most recent press announcement: 1 - Customer POI from .cvs files. This would allow us to upload Geocaches as a POI layer. I'd love to be able to formalize my favorite waypoints into a POI layer that have built-in proximity alarms. 2 - The c340 has SD memory card expansion slot for use with other MapSource street-mapping products. This is good since the SD is probably the most available and cheapest memory card. 3 - The traffic module (GTM 10 FM TMC) looks like it's going to be a hardware model (ie, you buy the hardware but don't have to pay a service fee much like the GPS satellites). It also may be connectable to other autorouting GPS units via a serial interface. It does mention a possible subscription service but I'm always optimistic.

You have to have your compass turned on to get Sight-N-Go to work.

I had a simliar thing happen with a GPSmap 162. They'll take care of you.

Coke - Ford - HP - Garmin

An just think - satellite XM weather service starts at one easy payment per month of $29.99. A guess if you can afford a $2,500 GPS you can afford the $30 per month. I have to admit - I'd love to have one especially when fishing or hunting.

I was just joking. I know where you're coming from about the investment in mapping software.