planewood

They may be using 'bad sector' copy protection. They put bad sectors on the CD or DVD which their software will read around. Some copy programs just crap out when they hit the bad sectors. But, there are many that don't. They just copy or ignore the bad sectors and go on. For every copy protection scheme invented, there are a dozen programs written to get around the scheme. Just have to find one that works.

City Navigator Version 8 for travel in the USA. I got it at GPSDiscount.com for $109 + $5 shipping. A goecacher will have to answer the other question.

Sounds to me like something that stayed in the development phase to long, and when it finally got to market, had already been eclipsed by technology and consumer wants. Sure sign of a struggling company.

It definitely does NOT work that way. It also looks at the instantaneous GPS accuracy in the calculation. You can see the accuaracy number decrease or even increase quite rapidly as a change in reception quality happens. It is doing these recalculations ever 1 second hence the coordinates and EPE are changing continuously. As the unit gets better locked in to all satellites in view, the difference in the reported values get smaller and smaller.

The way I think the EPE is calcualted is like so. The GPSr get the average coordinate from all satellites it's locked onto then calculates the distance from all these coordinates to this average coordinate. The reported EPE is then the average of all these distances. I don't know if it's gets any more complicated than that such as throwing out really bad coordinates before doing the averaging (weighted averaging). My guess is that it does not. The validity of the reported coordinates and the EPE is greatly affected by the quality of reception. Anything you can do to improve the quality of reception will result in coordinates closer to the actual lat/lon of your position. With an external antenna for my 60cx, I generally get 7-8 feet reported EPE. Bear in mind that this is just an estimate and is sorta like fitting a best fit straight line through a cloud of points. It also looks to me that the 60cx calulates EPE using the data gathered before WAAS corrections are applied. I can get a 10' EPE and still get reported coordinates that are within 2 or 3 feet from a surveyed location. (when using the external antenna on a bright clear low humidity day with no obstructions and using WAAS)

Swapped the 1 gig card in the 60cx with the 256meg card in the 3rd Legend cx. The 60 cx would see and autoroute with the maps on the 256 meg card. but the Legend would not unlock the maps on the 1 gig card. That is because the 1 gig card was written before the 3rd license was added to Mapsource. Were I to recreate the 1 gig card now, I'm sure the Legend would see the maps too. I have no desire to break the license aggrement, I'm just curious how this all works.

Well, I did find out that the 25 character Unlock Codes are kept in the system registery of your Windows system. Under SOFTWARE,MAPSOURCE,CODES. So, the Unlock Codes and the unit serial numbers must be included in the map files written to the MicroSD card where they are authenticated by the GPSr during use. When writing the card, they must associate the Unlock Codes to the valid serial numbers by going to the Garmin web site as the valid serial numbers are not kept on the computer at all that I can find. This would mean that if your system registry gets hosed, then your SOL, or if you lose your internet connection during the creation of the card. I'll next swap cards between my 60cx and one of the Legends and see what that causes.

I have 4 GPS's units. I used the two license's with the first purchased copy of CN V8 for units 1 & 2. I have now obtained a 3rd Unlock Code using one of the two licenses from the 2nd purchased copy of CN. I used the Unlock Wizard within Mapsource to obtain the 25 character Unlock Code registered to the 3rd unit. When I wrote a new mapset to a 256 meg MicroSD card (using the SD adapter), it never asked me what Coupon Code to use nor the serial number of the GPS it was to be used with. So, my question is - How does it know which one goes goes with what unit? Are all Unlock codes stored with Mapsource and then all transferred to all used MicroSD cards?

You probably will need to uninstall Mapsource and reinstall it.

Ok, Great! The data is already collected. But, why couldn't they adopt some kind of a national standard data base that Google Earth can link to for mapping. Like: Lon, Lat, Reason for call, Date. Adopt some standards for 'Reason for call'. Or, would this just tell the criminals where the easy marks are? Police and fire departments are civil employees. Surly the public has a right to know.

Watching the nightly news I got to wondering about something. Here in Houston, most, if not all, police cars have a computer on board. If they can afford a computer, then surely they could afford a cheap GPSr if they don't already have one. Seems like it'd be pretty easy to record the GPS coordinates of the location of a crime. If some major GPS manufacturer would work with Google Earth to facilitate a crimes data base mapping capability then at least citizens could find out where crimes are being committed or the locations of police callouts. They could even show different icons for different types of crimes or disturbances. I for one know very little about crimes that have happened nearby. Would letting citizens know the locations of crimes or disturbances cause a problem?

I just ordered City Navigator from GPSDiscount.com and got it in 5 days with a $5 mailing cost. They even included a XL Tee-shirt with their logo on it! Whoop-tee-doo!

I guess that's for like one of those container ships that takes 10 miles to stop? If I fell overboard, everyone would have their GPS turned off. By the time they got a sat lock, they'd say "Oh, well, we tried!"

OK, the US should also switch to metric at the same time. I m pissed of with Garmin, Google and the like mixing up units for example. I, for one, do NOT think the US needs to switch to metric. Our measuring system works fine for us "US" folks. Should we also switch to Euros for youur convenience? I have no intent on starting a flame war, and this is off topic, but I don't like to be told I need to switch to another form of measurement so I can be like "the rest of the world". I am happy with my system of measurement in my "US". Thank you. Being an 'old fart' from the USA and having a degree in engineering, I can work with the metric system but I still think in feet. Yes, I do appreciate the advantages of the metric system but my old brain is just to fixed in the 'old ways'. I mean like one side of a ten acre track is 660 feet, right!

I think your on a good track! You might consider different software for the differing needs of Individuals. For instance. I use my GPSr for surveying/mapping types of applications. I have no desire to use it for geocaching. Concentrate on one type of need, and make the best software you can for that particular need. Capturing point coordinates and moving them from a GPSr to a computer is critical for all types of users, as well as moving coordinates from a computer to a GPSr. In other words, keep the software short, sweet, and simple and targeted to a particular audience. Lots of software people have failed trying to do all things for all people.

Or just put it in a clear plastic zip-loc baggie.

Ok, I see. I built some custom Waypoint Icons and transparency works fine with them. Just not with POI's. I would think they would have included some cartography icons. But, I guess that is not where the money is for these handheld units. I can make my own. I'll use waypoints to display my stuff for now. Will switch to POI's if they ever make it so that just select sets can be displayed, with icons having transparency and displaying the names.

Thanks Red! I notice all the POI's still display on the map. That's sorta defeats what I was hoping for. I have quite a lot of POI's in one small area which really fogs up the map. But, the POI's are of 8 or 10 different types. Selecting one type and having only that one type display would be mucho better for me. Maybe someday! Having a name beside the POI would help too. Or at least let one cursor over the icon to see the name.

Ah! Forgot about pressing the menu button! Now I see the different data bases. Thank you! On the other, I'm using the latest release of the 60cx software and firmware, if that's what you mean. How do I get a POI icon with a transparent background for my Garmin 60cx?

I have tried using (RGB 255,0,255) for the transparancy color with POI icons but the color still shows up. Any suggestions? The bmp file is 24 x 24 pixels, using 256 colors. All the background pixels are using the 255,0,255 color, but the background still shows up in the GPSr map view showing the icon. Also, I have built 3 subdirectories under the POILoader directory each with a csv file and bmp file. But, I'm still getting just one directory on the MicroSD card with all combined POI's showing up on the screen as one big list. And, how do I tell for sure that the POILoader.exe that I'm running is indeed the 2.4 Beta version. It seems to have put it into the same name and directory as version 2.3.

Finally bought my second copy. www.gpsdiscount.com. $109 + shipping by FedEx air. Also finally got my $150 rebate from Garmin (3 units - Legend CX). Took 5 weeks.

Using csv files, how do you get the point names to show beside the symbols on the map. I'm using csv like so - lon,lat,name1; lon,lat,name2; etc. Also, am I correct in assuming that I can put sub-directories under the POI directory and have them show as different 'data bases'?

GeoCalc is another one. Lots of little goodies in it. http://www.fizzymagic.net/Geocaching/GeoCalc/GeoCalc.html

The fish track thing didn't work for me using Win XP. Also tried the online version and it created an empty GPX file.

You know, my testing on that was done with software that was 2 or 3 releases back. Maybe I should test it again.