Junkman_05

Vista HCx for the money, great little unit. If you want a bigger screen go with the Oregon.

Ditto. Tritto You can go to the top of the page and hover over your "Logged In"name, and not have to post anything.

I'm not sure if you answered the really basic question, do you have good batteries and did you tell your GPS what kind you are using. I suggest trying to boot without SD card installed, and go into setup and tell it what kind of batteries you're using. If you're sure you have good batts. try removing them or switching to another set. I know this sounds stupid, but sometimes we get bad batteries. Does it boot up without SD card? Can you at least get it to boot up long enough see the base map? You can also use mapinstall to compile and load maps while the card is in the GPS, not a card reader, but it takes longer. About an hour or so. Good luck and post what you try.

Don't use file transfer, use Map Install. Put your MicroSD in a card reader and send the data there. you have to leave the folder named gmapsupp.img. stick it back into your GPS and restart. I recently bought one of these Vista HCx and love it. this is the fastest way to get files on to your GPS.

I've owned several GPSr and my most recent purchase of a Vista HCx from adorama $220 was a steal. Go to the Garmin comparison page and unless you just have to have the bigger screen, paperless Geocaching, and the ability to do some tasks wirelessly, I'd save a bunch of money and buy a Vista HCx. I love mine, it's very programmable to your own likes, and there is a ton of maps and software for it. IMHO

Brand new Vista HCx. After loading up several mapsets using mapinstall, all the POI's came with each set, loaded up my "find" page, with so many choices they overlap each other. I am showing airport Icons everywhere. I have adjusted the "least to most" and decluttered it, but too many icons. Granted I can see the advantages of knowing where a gas station or really cool natural wonder is at, but I can use my cell phone or yellow pages to find most anything else. It doesn't appear that anyone has actually tried any of the data here, because when i looked up the data in my tiny town of 1750 people, it give me numbers and addresses of closed or non-existent places. I used the poi loader to try and delete some of these, no good, it deleted everything. The file that comes offf my GPS is an "img" file. I contains the maps and poi data together, how can I separate these? I read on another post about SD card tricks, and the maps load up quicker with a card reader, then put card back into GPS and reboot. I created the different folders, but am not sure how to get the separate files into these folders, any ideas? I loaded up several geocaches between my home and old home town, about 60 miles apart and with the geocache icons and all the misc POI icons, you can't hardly see the roads. I've also used map setup to try and control these, but to no avail. There must be 40 small airports out here in a 40 mile radius, and my GPS shows an icon for each, boo! It appears that many of these poi's are included in the "City Nav. north am. NT 2008" map file. If I'm onlt showing my topo layer it's not too bad, but if I turn on the city map layer, my screen get so full of icons you can't see the roads! This is very frustrating. This is just a bunch of unneeded advertising being shoved down out throats! I might have found the problem, GSAK added by default, the airport icon to all waypoints. Airport is the first icon in their replacement icon area, so it defaulted the the first one. I changed this setting to "white dot" and applied it, this cut down the airport icons to the real airports. As far as other useless data it has forced on me, i will deal with that another time. It's time to go geocaching

I might have found the problem, GSAK added by default, the airport icon to all waypoints. Airport is the first icon in their replacement icon area, so it defaulted the the first one. I changed this setting to "white dot" and applied it, this cut down the airport icons to the real airports. As far as other useless data it has forced on me, i will deal with that another time. It's time to go geocaching.

Am I missing something here? Am I the only person who isn't rushing for an airport? I realize that we have an awful lot of people out here with personal airports, but I don't see the need to identify each and every one with an Icon the size of a highway marker, this seems to clutter up my already tiny display. My screen is set at 20 miles out, and I can see 16 airports and numerous road markers, the road markers I like, the airport icons must go! I've tried adjusting them from the map setup page. A lot of things are set to auto, I messed with this some. but not really getting anywhere. I've posted in another thread about removing these, but that thread was more about POI loader. I guess since I have a 2 gig card which is nowhere near full, I can live with all the added data space used up by needless POI's. I'm going to wipe out all changes and restore to original and try and load some map sets that don't have POI's in them. I'm really only wanting to get rid of those pesky airport icons. The loader is looking for .gpi and .gpx files, but my SD card has an .img file on it. I'm not sure how to separate these from each other, maybe I should just go back to bed and try again later.

Brand new Vista HCx. After loading up several mapsets using mapinstall, all the POI's came with each set, loaded up my "find" page, with so many choices they overlap each other. I am showing airport Icons everywhere. I have adjusted the "least to most" and decluttered it, but too many icons. Granted I can see the advantages of knowing where a gas station or really cool natural wonder is at, but I can use my cell phone or yellow pages to find most anything else. It doesn't appear that anyone has actually tried any of the data here, because when i looked up the data in my tiny town of 1750 people, it give me numbers and addresses of closed or non-existent places. I used the poi loader to try and delete some of these, no good, it deleted everything. The file that comes offf my GPS is an "img" file. I contains the maps and poi data together, how can I separate these? I read on another post about SD card tricks, and the maps load up quicker with a card reader, then put card back into GPS and reboot. I created the different folders, but am not sure how to get the separate files into these folders, any ideas? I loaded up several geocaches between my home and old home town, about 60 miles apart and with the geocache icons and all the misc POI icons, you can't hardly see the roads. I've also used map setup to try and control these, but to no avail. There must be 40 small airports out here in a 40 mile radius, and my GPS shows an icon for each, boo! It appears that many of these poi's are included in the "City Nav. north am. NT 2008" map file. If I'm onlt showing my topo layer it's not too bad, but if I turn on the city map layer, my screen get so full of icons you can't see the roads! This is very frustrating. This is just a bunch of unneeded advertising being shoved down out throats!

Brand new Vista HCx. After loading up several mapsets using mapinstall, all the POI's came with each set, loaded up my "find" page, with so many choices they overlap each other. I am showing airport Icons everywhere. I have adjusted the "least to most" and decluttered it, but too many icons. Granted I can see the advantages of knowing where a gas station or really cool natural wonder is at, but I can use my cell phone or yellow pages to find most anything else. It doesn't appear that anyone has actually tried any of the data here, because when i looked up the data in my tiny town of 1750 people, it give me numbers and addresses of closed or non-existent places. I used the poi loader to try and delete some of these, no good, it deleted everything. The file that comes offf my GPS is an "img" file. I contains the maps and poi data together, how can I separate these? I read on another post about SD card tricks, and the maps load up quicker with a card reader, then put card back into GPS and reboot. I created the different folders, but am not sure how to get the separate files into these folders, any ideas? I loaded up several geocaches between my home and old home town, about 60 miles apart and with the geocache icons and all the misc POI icons, you can't hardly see the roads. I've also used map setup to try and control these, but to no avail. There must be 40 small airports out here in a 40 mile radius, and my GPS shows an icon for each, boo!

The plain jane $99 etrex is for sure the easy and most economical way to go. You can poke in where you want to go and follow it. I would suggest staying with a Garmin, mainly because of all the online support, mostly from people who visit here. You can get anything for an etrex. I'm 2 weeks into a Vista HCx, bought from adorama for $220, a steal. It's a bit more money, but I don't see needing to upgrade for a LONG time. You can turn on only the pages you want, simple point & go or you can open a color map with waypoints and geocaches marked and waiting. You can send data straight to the Micro SD card, saving map loading time. If you aren't into maps, you soon will be. whatever your choice have fun and be safe. JM5

Can you delete the ones you don't want? Can you uninstall them too?

You need to load them all at the same time. I just edited my post, thanks, it's loading now.

I loaded several different maps on my Vista HCx using map source. Use Mapinstall program in Mapsource. Choose your mapset at the bottom, highlight the maps you want, go back to bottom and choose your next desired mapset, it will come up, highlight the maps you want from it. Continue to add different stuff, you'll see the bar graph on the right side grow. When you have highlighted all the separate maps you want, hit next, it should prompt you to load.