Noob has some stupid software questions

[THE HiTechRedneck]

Hello all, and thank you in advance for your patience!

 

I purchased a Garmin eTrex Venture HC last year for my better half. She wanted to learn all about geocacheing. So, after some research, I settled on the Venture.

 

Long story short, she's never bothered with the damned thing. So, I've non-commed it to use for my cross country scooter trips.

 

It did NOT come with any preloaded detailed maps, just the default stuff. Which isn't useful for me.

 

So, my biggest question is this: What is the difference between Mapsource's City Navigator and Topo? I mean, aside from the obvious? Does Topo have detailed roads and highways? Routing capability?

 

For my travels I prefer small county roads, not uber-highways....so I need software that'll easily route me along these types of roads. I don't really need big city mapping info. I spend a good part of my time hiking and camping and would like mapping software that includes such info.

 

In a nutshell, which would be more useful for me? CityNav or Topo? Or both?

 

Thanks for your help, I hope I posted this up in the right spot!

 

-HT

[+SkellyCA]

In a nut shell, City Nav will get you around the mountain via roads, a TOPO will get you over the mountain.

[+Prime Suspect]

Topo's road are limited (and often inaccurate). Get City Nav if you want on-board navigation.

[+coggins]

I purchased a Garmin eTrex Venture HC last year for my better half.

 

What is the difference between Mapsource's City Navigator and Topo? I mean, aside from the obvious? Does Topo have detailed roads and highways? Routing capability?

 

In a nutshell, which would be more useful for me? CityNav or Topo? Or both?

I think people are forgetting the Venture HC specs:

Automatic routing (turn by turn routing on roads): NO

 

Taking this into account, you can get some fine road maps here: LINK

and save the money for a TOPO set.

[+Mobcacher]

Also the HC only has 24mb City Nav will eat that up in a hurry

[jmundinger]

Also the HC only has 24mb City Nav will eat that up in a hurry

 

True, but if he is just using it to follow highways, a partial work around to the memory limit is to select only map segments along the intended route.

[THE HiTechRedneck]

Thank you for your replies!

 

I don't need "turn by turn".....when I route and navigate I have a waterproof mapcase with good 'ol written directions. I used to be a truck driver, so it's actually what I'm most comfortable with. What I DO need are maps that are more specific and detailed than most US driving maps (think more along the lines of Delorme's state maps that even show goat-tracks).

 

However, it would be nice to enter a starting point and an end point and have the software map the boonies routes for me....as opposed to my spending several hours going through each and every county through every state I'm traveling through.

 

I just don't know anything about GPS software I'm fairly web and computer savvy, but this is a brand new world....and thus far it's been extremely confusing.

 

So, with CityNav, you don't just upload your route to the GPS? Or is it simply that mb intensive?

 

What would be helpful is some sort of video tutorial for how Garmin's software works.

 

And Mobcacher, I'll will check out that link!

[Motorcycle_Mama]

That unit will not give you the route on roads any maps. That's what auto-routing and turn by turn mean in this context.

 

And since it doesn't support that function, it wouldn't make financial sense to purchase City Navigator especially when the Ibycus USA maps are free and are just as good (without the autorouting).

[+JBnW]

Its not that either software is all that MB intensive...its that the HC can only handle 24 MBs of total map files; of one product or the other or both. I have U.S. Topo V3.02, and selecting several tiles in my area, see that they run between 250-500 KB. Other products will no doubt vary. Topo will allow you to manually create a route, on the PC its not all that hard, then you can select the map tiles that correspond with that route (up to 24 MB), and load those tiles to your HC. You'd have to do that each time as writing a map set erases the previous map set on the GPSr. You can also upload the route as a line on the map for you to follow, but the HC won't tell you when to turn. Topo is not as accurate or complete as CN, IMHO, but no mapset is perfect.