troycanadian

Occaisionally people sell "dead" (not econimically repairable) GPSr's on EBAY. Wait for one to come up with an intact screen. Or sell yours, which is obviously beyond economical repair and use the money to offset the cost of a new one.

GPSCity.ca When I got my vista, they had the best price I could find, period. Thier phone support is excellent, online ordering is easy. They email you a purolator tracking number for your shipment. AND, I had my unit in less than 24hrs with the normal ship method. I will definitely use them again.

You can most definitley put your own maps on a Vista though, with no Mapsource sw in sight.

Whoops, I meant SendMap. I'll edit that one. Hmm, guess I can't edit the Topic or the first post. Good to see you're paying attention though.

Thanks for your responses. I gave it a shot and I am entirely impressed. Although a geocaching newb, I primarily bought the Vista for hiking and climbing in the backcountry (and I like toys too!). The ability to create a custom map with virtually as much detail as you want is a very powerful tool - and perfect for my activities. It takes a bit of time and surprisingly not all that much experimentation. Scan map for base image. Calibrate with Oziexplorer (trial ver.). Draw vector map on top of base image with MapEdit and export using integral cGPSmapper. Upload to GPSr with SendMap. Done! cGPSmapper Tells you how to do it all. No Garmin MapSource required.

Before I corrupt my brand new Vista, I thought I'd ask if anybody here has had experience with GPSMapper, GPSMapEdit, and MapSend. Or as an alternative to MapSend, GPSExplorer. It's the upload itself I am most concerned about. This is where I suspect I could do the most damage.