ejnewman

The only way in Mapsource is to wipe and reload the entire thing. A newer version of City Navigator just came out, but it doesn't sound like the map data was updated much.

I think there are battery packs that you can buy that can charge the unit without actually being near an electical outlet. But yeah, internal rechargeable batteries can be a bad idea in many situations.

A timely article: Why are my GPS maps out of date?

Suunto and Silva are probably the most common map compasses. I'm sure there are pros and cons for each, and everyone is willing to defend to the death their own favorite.

I carry a Brunton pocket transit usually, but mostly because I use it for other things. One of those would definitely be overkill for geocaching. I think they can cost more than a GPS.

Basemaps are pretty worthless. If you want to use the GPS as a roadmap you will have to buy maps for it, typically on the order of $80-100. You don't need any maps to geocache though, just something that tells you how far and in what direction to go.

You can have transparent topo maps if you make your own. http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm

I agree. They need to make it clearer that it comes with essentially no useful maps. Their website could also be a little clearer as far as what map packages are available and what the exact differences between those are.

GPS satellites don't know or care whether you are near an intersection. The only time the maps would matter at all if if you have the option to stick you to a road turned on, and corners wouldn't make any difference there. I suppose in a car you are more likely to be moving slower near an intersection, but I don't know if your speed affects the accuracy or not.

I think in Garmin's secret model code, the "x" means expandable memory. There may be other differences, but that is the main one.

Why is that?

It could be the basemap. There is a "snap to road" (or something like that) setting that you can turn on if you know you are on a road. As far as following its own track, one of the sources of error is atmospheric conditions, which can be relatively consistent (that's why WAAS works) so it's quite likely that it will be consistently inaccurate. If you were in your car it's also possible that the signal was distorted by the windshield/roof. FWIW, I've never seen an error that large between my Vista Cx and the roads in my copy of CNNA7. I've never checked the accuracy of the base map though.

A few people in the other thread mentioned that the POIs in their towns were as out of date in CN8 as they were in CN7.

If you get one with removeable memory (the Vista Cx has this) then it's just like swapping cards for a camera, just with smaller (in dimension, not necessarily in storage) cards. In my copy of City Navigator 7, Oregon is in two pieces. One is about 100 miles wide along the coast and is 15.3MB, the second is the rest of the state and is 10.5MB, so you could easily fit all of Oregon on a 32MB memory card. If you are going on a longer trip then you can either buy a bigger memory card or bring along a laptop and switch maps as necessary. A third alternative if the maps you need for a trip won't even fit on a big card is to get several small ones and divide up the maps, swapping them as necessary as you go. City Select (which you may or may not be able to still buy) and City Navigator 8 (which may or may not actually be out yet) have smaller map pieces so you have a little more flexibility in what areas you can bring along with limited storage. As far as overkill in shopping goes, it's always a safe bet to get the best unit you can afford. Odds are that after playing with it you will want something better no matter what you get.

According to the other thread the biggest change was smaller sizes for the individual map pieces. It sounds like there weren't as many changes to the roads and POIs, or at least some errors in CN7 are still in CN8.

It will be fine for geocaching as far as I know. The problem is that after you get your GPS, you will realize all the other cool things you can do with it and wish you had gotten a better one.

Seconding (or fifthing or whatever) that any of the base maps are going to be pretty worthless; if you want to use it as a roadmap then you would have to buy a better map package no matter what base map is on there. You have to buy all of N. America in one package, I think it runs about $100 for either of the versions. City Navigator is the best, though as someone already mentioned, City Select may be better for you because it is broken into smaller pieces to give you a little more flexibility on what to load on a device with a small amount of storage. The alternative is always to bring along a laptop so you can swap out sections of the map whenever you want.

I think all of the City _______ products have about the same maps, but the Navigator (the more expensive one) has better routing info built into the maps so the GPS can give you better directions as far as when to turn, etc. Your Vista Cx can use that info if it is available, but a GPS that can't give driving directions doesn't need that stuff.

I have no idea. If you are getting it discounted anyway then I would go for the fanciest on you can afford. The map it comes with has interstate highways and some state highways. There are other state highways missing, and no country roads or city streets. You can look in at the detail in all of Garmin's maps on their website. Look for the Mapsource Map Viewer box; you can zoom in on your town and see how much detail is in each of the available maps. I don't think you can look at the base map in the previewer, probably because they don't want to show how crappy it is. You don't need any map for geocaching really, just an arrow pointing towards the cache. You only have to buy one map package from Garmin to get North America. I don't know how accurate the roads are outside of the US, but inside the US it should have any road that has been there for a few years. Look at the viewer on Garmin's website if you want to see what roads are there and what aren't. The thing to watch out for when traveling is whether you can fit the maps you need on the storage in the unit. Garmin's maps are cut into chunks so you don't have to store the entire US on the GPS at once, and you transfer from your computer the parts of the map that you will need for your trip. You can buy bigger memory chips for the Vista CX (it come with 64MB it think, and you can buy 1-2GB chips for it), which means that it can hold more maps at once if you want it to. For example, Illinois is divided into 3 pieces, totalling up to about 43MB. You can fit this on a 64MB memory card, but not a 32MB card. Iowa is just one piece and is only about 18MB. Indiana is two pieces adding up to about 28MB.

The Vista CX has maps, compass, and computer cable. I don't know what exactly you mean by it needing to transition to paperless caching, but it does. It has expandable memory too, so you can put lots of maps on it if you want. Not sure about Mac compatibility though, the computer connection is USB so you would probably need some drivers from Garmin. It's pretty much the fanciest Etrex that you can get that doesn't have the upgraded reciever stuff that the more expensive GPSMAP line has. Keep in mind that you'll have to spend another $100 or so to get decent road maps for it, the base map it comes with is pretty worthless.

You need associate URLs with Internet Explorer instead of Firefox probably, so your computer knows what to do when you click on a link in a program that isn't a web browser. You should be able to do this from the IE options window I think.

This is pretty much the whole reason they release a beta, to find problems before the final version. Anyone who installs a beta version of anything should expect it to be buggy.

I had a similiar experience, but the perpetrator was a human, not a rat. :-\

This was the consensus in the last box-locking thread, I believe.

Mapsource is on version 6.something. The Topo version number shouldn't have anything to do with how the maps are transferred to the device, the Mapsource app itself does that. Mapsource is for displaying and transfering the maps you buy or make (topo, street, or otherwise).