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Help With Deciding To Buy A Gps


MREAGLEWO1

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How much is "too much"? The Legend will set ya back roughly about $150. It won't hold very many street maps though. The Legend C will set you back about $250 - it's got a beautiful color display and will hold about 3 times the maps than the Legend and will give turn-by-turn directions. The 60C will hold 7 times the number of maps of the Legend and does a few more tricks than the Legend C - it'll suck a quick $350 out of your wallet!

 

Then ya gotta get the maps! Figure on $80 to $110 for the maps (depending on which GPSr you choose).

 

Hope this helps...

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Ahhhh - y'know what!? You should maybe look at the GPS V. It holds a little over 2 times the maps of a Legend, does autorouting, gets good reception and comes WITH the map software - all for about $250!

 

It was all the rage back before the 60 series came out about 20 months ago. Still a great unit! Nearly indestructable.

 

B.T.W. - the RINO 120 DOES hold maps - 8MB - same as a Legend.

Edited by Neo_Geo
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It really depends on the population of the area in question. MetroGuide maps are full of POI (points of interest) data which takes up most of the memory. The higher the population density in a given area, the more businesses there are to serve the population, and thus more POIs.

 

I cannot load the entire Washington, DC Beltway road system into 8MB, but I can load the entire state of South Dakota and a good part of Nebraska.

 

Refer to the pink-shaded area in the image below. That represents 7.24MB of MetroGuide version 5. Version 7 (now current) will probably take slightly more memory for the same given area.

 

c39098f1-7506-4c40-b7c6-4d5d8739b3a7.jpg

Edited by Neo_Geo
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Nope - no way of adding memory. That's a sore point with Garmin users. We'd love to have Garmin give us units that use SD memory cards, or some sort of expandable memory, but in this area they're not listening to their customers' wants and needs...

 

The pink-shaded area in the above diagram shows three seperate map segments. You can pick and choose areas to install up to a certain extent. The light grey grid lines represent the borders of selectable map segments. So you could deselect one of the three pink-shaded rectangles and select a different one.

Edited by Neo_Geo
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MetroGuide maps are full of POI (points of interest) data which takes up most of the memory.

Have you seen a breakdown of the memory usage in Garmin's map programs? I saw elsewhere that the 6 million POIs in City Select-NA v7 only amount to 10% of the memory but that also gave no source. Consideration of the data required per POI led me to a back-of-envelope estimate of about 20% but it depends on how much compression is used.

 

Mr. Eagle,

Keep in mind that maps, like the MetroGuide ones shown by NeoGeo, will add about $80 to the price, so the total for the Rino 120 would be about $270. OTOH, a GPS V with twice as much memory can be bought for about $200 which includes City Select maps plus the auto-routing feature. My inclination would be to go with the V and buy a separate radio for about $50 *unless* you have friends who will also have Rinos and you want to use the feature that lets you see the location of the other people on your screen.

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I've not heard anything through the grapevine that they have any plans to do that. Then again, they may might discontinue it sometime soon. If they did discontinue it, it wouldn't have any impact on its performance. It would just mean that they wouldn't make any firmware updates, and they haven't had any updates since October of 2003 anyway. Just goes to show that they've got everything right with it by now. :blink:

 

Just because it's old, doesn't make it any lesser of a GPSr than it was two years ago. It just means that they've come out with some slicker models that cost a lot more money.

 

With the V's 19MB of memory, you could add maps for all of Manhattan!

Edited by Neo_Geo
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MetroGuide maps are full of POI (points of interest) data which takes up most of the memory.

Have you seen a breakdown of the memory usage in Garmin's map programs? I saw elsewhere that the 6 million POIs in City Select-NA v7 only amount to 10% of the memory but that also gave no source. Consideration of the data required per POI led me to a back-of-envelope estimate of about 20% but it depends on how much compression is used.

Given that a POI has about 50 bytes of data, and if there are 6 million POIs, I figured about 300MB of POI data. Given that a CD holds 700MB, I figured close to 1/2 the actual data on a MetroGuide CD are POI data.

 

Compare how many Roads & Recreation maps (which contain very little POI data) you can load into a GPSr with how many MetroGuide maps you can load...

 

That's the basis of my of my thinkin'.

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neo, what did you exactly mean by road and rec maps vs poi  about memory

That was directed toward Peter in reference to how much of some older maps could be loaded into a GPSr.

 

what about gpsmap60? 

A fine unit indeed. She'll do about everything a GPS V can do and more - and she's priced that way too! About $250 for the GPSr and another $110 for the maps = $360.00 total. Then it becomes a toss-up between the MAP60 and a LegendC...

 

It's considerably more than your desired $200 budget. The GPS V is a lot of "Bang for the buck". Considering your stated budget, and how many more bells and whistles you'd get with a 60 or a Legend C, I think you might feel you spent way too much money if you went with one of those later models.

Edited by Neo_Geo
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neo, what did you exactly mean by road and rec maps vs poi  about memory

That was directed toward Peter in reference to how much of some older maps could be loaded into a GPSr.

 

what about gpsmap60? 

A fine unit indeed. She'll do about everything a GPS V can do and more - and she's priced that way too! About $250 for the GPSr and another $110 for the maps = $360.00 total. Then it becomes a toss-up between the MAP60 and a LegendC...

 

It's considerably more than your desired $200 budget. The GPS V is a lot of "Bang for the buck". Considering your stated budget, and how many more bells and whistles you'd get with a 60 or a Legend C, I think you might feel you spent way too much money if you went with one of those later models.

If i do decide to go with the gpsmap60, i seen it for 246.92. is that a good pricE?

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Given that a POI has about 50 bytes of data, and if there are 6 million POIs, I figured about 300MB of POI data. Given that a CD holds 700MB, I figured close to 1/2 the actual data on a MetroGuide CD are POI data.

 

Compare how many Roads & Recreation maps (which contain very little POI data) you can load into a GPSr with how many MetroGuide maps you can load...

My estimate was pretty similar but I was using a total database size of 1646 MB for CitySelect-NA with auto-routing and 1184 for CS/MG without auto-routing as given by:

http://www.gpsriders.net/mapsource_sizes.html

 

Roads & Recreation differs in many ways besides having far fewer POIs. E.g. roads are drawn much more smoothly in MG/CS which requires more points in the database and there's the additional data to enable address and intersection lookups.

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what about gpsmap60?

As NeoGeo pointed out, it's considerably above your stated $200 budget since it plus the CitySelect-NA maps would cost about $360.

 

In that price range, a unit I'd consider is the Quest. It sells for about $340 and includes CitySelect-NA as well as both PC and car power cables and a dashboard mount. Although mainly marketed as an automotive unit, it's also quite handy as a handheld and is actually smaller and lighter than the 60 series. The built-in lithium cell can be a drawback but there are work-arounds for longer trips away from power sources.

 

Big advantages over the GPS V or the GPSMap 60 are the much larger memory of 115 MB and a very sharp color screen. The voice directions when used in a car are pretty neat as well.

Edited by peter
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for the mapping, does it have to be garmin brand, or can it be microsoft streets....etc.

If you want the maps to show up on the Garmin GPS receiver then it pretty much has to be Garmin maps. [There are some 3rd-party maps that are Garmin compatible, but they're mainly for countries that Garmin doesn't cover or for special applications.]

 

Programs like MicroSoft Streets&Trips or DeLorme's StreetAtlas are compatible only in the sense that you can connect your receiver to your laptop and use that as a moving map/navigator and/or that waypoints/routes/tracks can be transferred - but not maps.

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Pretty good deal, but as has been pointed out before you can also get a GPS V for about the same price and that has over twice the memory, the generally more versatile CitySelect instead of USTopo maps, audible alarms and notifications, external antenna options, and auto-routing. The Legend is a little smaller and lighter, but I'd consider the V to be a better unit overall.

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I recently lost my Garmin Vista (How does one lose a GPS... At least IT knows where it is). :lol:

 

I've still got a GPS-V that I use for driving.

 

When I use the GPS-V for caching (off-road goto), I find that the GPS-V takes a long time to refresh the navigation screen. I keep walking 20-30 feet past the waypoint before the navigation screen updates and tells me the cache is behind me. :lol:

 

It's done this since I bought it and is very frustrating. For driving it's OK. For caching, it's getting ready to be thrown in a lake... <_<

 

Has anyone out there noticed this in their GPS-V? Is it the autoroute function that's keeping the V from updating? If so, is there a way to turn it off temporarily?

 

I really loved my Vista. It updated promptly and always (well, usually) got me to the cache location.

 

I'm thinking of replacing it with another Vista or upgrading to a Vista C. I read that the Vista C has autorouting as well. So I'm afraid to spend all that money on a GPS that's slower than my gait.

 

So, I'm asking for information and advice.

Why is my GPS-V so slow

Vista or Vista C

 

I need to make a decision and buy something before the 2 October geocaching event in Virginia.

 

Cache on!!!!!

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MetroGuide maps are full of POI (points of interest) data which takes up most of the memory.

Have you seen a breakdown of the memory usage in Garmin's map programs? I saw elsewhere that the 6 million POIs in City Select-NA v7 only amount to 10% of the memory but that also gave no source. Consideration of the data required per POI led me to a back-of-envelope estimate of about 20% but it depends on how much compression is used.

 

Mr. Eagle,

Keep in mind that maps, like the MetroGuide ones shown by NeoGeo, will add about $80 to the price, so the total for the Rino 120 would be about $270. OTOH, a GPS V with twice as much memory can be bought for about $200 which includes City Select maps plus the auto-routing feature. My inclination would be to go with the V and buy a separate radio for about $50 *unless* you have friends who will also have Rinos and you want to use the feature that lets you see the location of the other people on your screen.

I've got a GPS-V that I use for driving.

 

When I use the GPS-V for caching (off-road goto), I find that the GPS-V takes a long time to refresh the navigation screen. I keep walking 20-30 feet past the waypoint before the navigation screen updates and tells me the cache is behind me. :lol:

 

It's done this since I bought it and is very frustrating. For driving it's OK. For caching, it's getting ready to be thrown in a lake... <_<

 

Cache on!!!!!

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Here's something I posted on another thread.

 

Ok, where to start. I lean towards Garmin, but there are a few other good gpsr mfg. on the market.

 

I believe every gpsr on the market will work for geocaching. Some will make your experience easier than others. I started with a Cobra DLX1000. Very basic unit with expandible memory. I learned very quick that having a ability to download caches directly to the unit is very important as the Corbra is not recognized by all geocaching software on the market. With that said, it still works fine, just have to manually load the coords.

 

After about five caches I purchased a Garmin GPSmap 60cs (More expensive @ $419.00) for me and a Garmin Legend (Less expensive @ $199.00 as a package including car adapter and Mapsource Topo software) for my wife. These are at both ends of the spectrum, but both have been very successful @ finding caches. Heck, there are times under heavy tree cover I've had to use the Legend due to my 60cs loosing a signal. With that said, just this past week, I went out an purchased a Garmin Legend C (Middle of the road price @ $284.00). Keep this a secret, my wife hasn't found out yet. This GPSR is in the middle of the 60cs and the Legend. I've cached with it one time and was successful with it the first time.

 

Long story short, every gpsr will work. Question is how fancy do you want and how much money you willing to spend. They all have their pros and cons. If your willing to spend the $, I would think you would like the Garmin 60cs or the 60c (no electronic compass with 60c, but a compass that only works while moving) as both will do almost everything you would like. At about half the price, you have the Vista C (has electronic compass and usually $50.00 more then the Legend C) or the Legend C (has no electronic compass, but a compass that only works while moving). Any of these you would probably be happy with. Of course there is always the Lowrance iFinder H20, which I've heard a lot about on this forum, but I know nothing about.

 

Good Luck

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Save the little bit of extra money and go for a unit with color and a USB port.

Im new to this, but cant you buy a USB cable for a lot of these units? No color wont stop me but a serial connection will slow me down (im clever).

 

I keep going back and forth between units... I just need something basic and simple for hiking/camping but I would love to have a gps/r in the car with me.

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Save the little bit of extra money and go for a unit with color and a USB port.

Im new to this, but cant you buy a USB cable for a lot of these units? No color wont stop me but a serial connection will slow me down (im clever).

 

I keep going back and forth between units... I just need something basic and simple for hiking/camping but I would love to have a gps/r in the car with me.

The USB cable is now standard, and the serial/power cable is optional.

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Im new to this, but cant you buy a USB cable for a lot of these units? No color wont stop me but a serial connection will slow me down (im clever).

Most of the older models (various B&W eTrexi, GPS V, Meridians, etc.) only have RS-232 compatible ports. You can buy USB/RS-232 adapter cables to make them compatible with laptops that only have USB, but that can't speed up the data transfer since it's still limited by the slowest link in the communications chain, i.e. the RS-232 port at the GPS.

 

Usually this is only of significance for transferring maps. With units that have removable SD or other cards the map transfer can be made fast by using an external card read/writer. For other units you need to plan ahead a little before a trip to allow time for map transfers (takes about 45 minutes to an hour for a GPS V or Vista). Can't say I've ever really been inconvenienced by that - I normally have at least a few hours notice before leaving on a trip that's long enough to take me out of the local area that I keep mapped.

 

OTOH, many of the newer units now only have USB which can be a real problem when trying to interface to other equipment that needs RS-232 compatible signals such as chartplotters, radar, auto-pilots, fishfinders, VHF radios, EPIRBs, etc.

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