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Is A 512 Meg Card Over Kill?


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I have a 128 in my GPS no I can keep the whole gulf coast, plus more in it.

 

will putting a bigger SD card in really maek a diff?

 

I have a 512 in my PDA and dont use it much would a swap over be benificial the the GPS map side fo things? how bout when I get Direct route?

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My genereal rule of thumb is that when I run out of room, I need a bigger card...but not until then. <_<

 

So if you already have a card that is able to handle everything you want to store on it, sit tight. That being said, for anyone having to buy a card I recommend 256MB at an absolute minimum just because of the pricing. With rebates, 512MB or 1GB usually make a lot of sense, too. (I just ordered a 1GB card for $20 after rebate.)

 

When you get DR, you may well want to use the bigger card.

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Bigger is better. I few years ago I bought a 486 computer with 256 meg hard drive. I was told then that this hard drive was so big that i would never fill it. Look at things now. With that 512 meg card you should be able to load all the area maps you want onto the card and never have to mess with it again.

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As other's have said more is usually better. Sure at some point it's overkill but it's hard to say longterm.

 

For example I'm planning a trip that will hit ND, MT, WY, ID, UT, CO, NM, AZ and on a 512 meg card I was able to put topo and metroguide data for all the above states, and still have 100 meg left. That said had the 1 gig cards been available I'd have got one. You can always not use the space, but if you need it and don't have it you are out of luck. Also if you had say the national parks topo which has 24K maps on it and as I understand it they take up a lot of memory in comparison. If I wanted to I could fill up a 512meg card even a 1 gig card probably, but for most my uses so far the 512 is more than enough. It makes me wonder how I ever survived with just 8 meg in my legend. In fact I used it on a field trip the other day and was annoyed quickly by how little of the 4 days route of road and topo maps I could get into 8 meg.

 

Also I'm hoping that now that large memory cards are the standard for gps units, that the mapping software will get better/more detailed. The topo maps could be a lot better and more detailed than they currently are.

 

It also brings up an interesting point in that lets say you get a 2 gig card, I don't think they are available yet, but certainly sometime soon they will be. I would be willing to bet you could almost get metroguide and topo maps for all of the US on one.....so at some point I'd think the gps companies might worry about that as an issue, people buying large memory cards loading them up with maps for the whole of the US and selling them.

 

Also on another front, if garmin gets their stuff together so you can store waypoints/routes/tracks etc. on the memory card directly, those things are probably not big memory hogs but thats a whole new type of functionality garmin users have not used yet, and is another allocation of memory space. Just think if your waypoints, tracks, routes etc. were only limited by memory card size. I also wonder if garmin is not saving this little tidbit of a feature for future models to replace the "x" series.

 

As other's have said, if the price is reasonable, bigger is better. Better to have the space and not need it, than need it and not have it.

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The only reason I hold off on buying the largest size available at any time I need to buy something bigger is price. If I bought a 256mb card when they were $20 instead of a 1g at $150 (I'm sorta making up numbers, so don't hold me too close to them...just trying to illustrate a point), and then bought a 512mb when they came down to $20 and a 1g when they came down to $20, then I have 3 SD cards adding up to 1.75gb of storage (which I can use in cameras and PDAs) for less than what the 1g would have cost me if I just bought into the biggest available at the time.

 

Memory always seems to get cheaper. There's usually a sweet spot of the most megabytes per dollar that makes sense to aim for (as long as it will take care of your current need and that of the immediate future).

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I seem to remember the same reasoning being used by a fellow cacher for not upgrading his GPS. Since he is sure that whatever he buys will be obsolete tomorrow he cant ever bring himself to upgrade, so he is using what amounts to a divining rod to hunt for caches.

 

If the divining rod works for him and he doesn't feel the need to upgrade, then why should he? As consumers, we've all been trained we must have the latest and greatest in everything. Often all you need is what you've already got.

 

I wish I could share hiw view, I'd probably be happier. As it is, I just bought myself a 60CSx I didn't really need. :(

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It also brings up an interesting point in that lets say you get a 2 gig card, I don't think they are available yet, but certainly sometime soon they will be.

 

ATP_2gig_SD_alone.jpgHere

 

That's not a MicroSD, which I believe is what he's looking for.

 

Oh...Sorry about that.... :o

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Heh, actually for my use on a 76csx a microSD (transflash) would be required and I think they are at a max of 1gig that I've seen, but no doubt higher capacity will come.

 

I am actually looking to put higher resolution topo's on my 512 card for certain areas and I have a feeling that 512 meg is not going to seem like nearly as much once a person starts putting 24K topos on it.

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