4GB Cards Supported yet?

[dentalrep]

I am interested in getting a Garmin Vista HCX but do not want to be changing out cards regularly. I travel a lot and I would like to install North America NT and TOPO 2008 all on one card. I currently have a Garmin 2820 and it is not the most travel friendly device. With the larger capacity cards coming out it would be nice to be able to have one device with all the maps on it that I need or might need. I would even install Blue chart maps as well if I had enough room. Any news on HC cards?

[+Sputnik 57]

Two problems. The Garmin units do not seem to have the hardward configuration to support 4GB micro cards. Also, the firmware (?) limits you to a total of 2025 map tiles, which means you can't get everything onto a single card. How about a Topo card and a City Nav card?

[+geo climber]

Two problems. The Garmin units do not seem to have the hardward configuration to support 4GB micro cards. Also, the firmware (?) limits you to a total of 2025 map tiles, which means you can't get everything onto a single card. How about a Topo card and a City Nav card?

Does that also limit the usefullness of a 2GB card for loading topo maps? I'm planning to buy a blank card for my new Vista HCx, and wondering whether to get a single 2GB card or two 1GB cards.

[+allory]

With a 2gb card you can load all of CityNav and then the topo maps you are most likely to want on a regular basis till you run out of room. An additional smaller card can be used to load up a smaller area when a particular trip requires it.

[Glenn W]

[Does that also limit the usefullness of a 2GB card for loading topo maps? I'm planning to buy a blank card for my new Vista HCx, and wondering whether to get a single 2GB card or two 1GB cards.

 

With CityNav NT and Topo 2008, you should get the 2 GB card. If you load all of CityNav NT, you can still load about 1/3 of the TOPO 2008 before hitting the 2 GB max and the 2025 segments max at nearly the same time. Because the older version of Topo used less memory than topo 2008, you woiuld typically run out of segments before running out of memory on a 2 GB card. That is no longer the case with Topo 2008.