Benefits of EasyGPS over Mapsource?

[+lil'hobo]

I have been enjoying my recent upgrade to premium membership and its additional features. I have a Venture HC and download my pocket queries into Mapsource to load onto my GPSr. It works great, however, I am wondering if EasyGPS has some additional benefit over using the Mapsource program? Does it display more cache information on the GPSr or is it just a different means to the same end. While the Venture HC will never be paperless, the more info in it the better in my opinion. And if EasyGPS can do it, I'll give it a try.

 

Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

lil'hobo

[+wkmccall]

I have been enjoying my recent upgrade to premium membership and its additional features. I have a Venture HC and download my pocket queries into Mapsource to load onto my GPSr. It works great, however, I am wondering if EasyGPS has some additional benefit over using the Mapsource program? Does it display more cache information on the GPSr or is it just a different means to the same end. While the Venture HC will never be paperless, the more info in it the better in my opinion. And if EasyGPS can do it, I'll give it a try.

 

Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

lil'hobo

 

Not sure how much more information you can get from EasyGPS versus MapSource - might be a touch more if any.

The one most people use would be GSAK to push the hints and such to the GPS as waypoints. I'm not sure if your GPS is covered under by the macro that GSAK uses though.

[+Chuy!]

EasyGPS is a simple, user-friendly, plane Jane software to manage waypoints. I recommend it only to newbies who want a basic program to download waypoints. MapSource is better; although it's starting to become a big fat file. I stopped upgrading the softtare at version 6.13.7 . That has all I need and haven't seen anything of significance added to it since then that I care to have. The two main things I like about MapSource is it's ability to draw tracks; and it's ability to dump all the waypoints into Google-Earth.

 

BTW, I'm pretty sure I saw a software update for the Venture HC that allowed it to accept customized Points of Interest - despite it not having an external data card option. 10K POIs' only take up about 3mb of space. And if you use GSAK's 60CSxPOI macro, you can download entire cache pages as POI's. It may take 15 POI pages to list one cache, but it's worth it IMO. I have my Vista HCx set up this way, and I haven't had to use my PDA since I started using this macro about 4 months ago. It has several customized settings to minimize the POIs.

Edited May 12, 2009 by Chuy!

[+lil'hobo]

Thanks for your input. I kind of thought that EasyGps was more or less just a free Mapsource type program. I think I'll try that GSAK and see how the POIs look on the venture. That would be kind of nice to get more page info on the unit.

 

Thanks again!

[+StarBrand]

The newest version of EasyGPS will transfer hints and friendly names from GPX files. Just a couple of tick boxes away!

[+lil'hobo]

The newest version of EasyGPS will transfer hints and friendly names from GPX files. Just a couple of tick boxes away!

 

Thanks for the tip, StarBrand. Once I figured out how to do it, EasyGPS is kinda cool. I like how instead of the cache name you can put the hints in, plus it decrypts it for you too.

[+lil'hobo]

what would you say are the pro's and con's between the two lil'hobo ? ... am new to this like you

 

Well, I am still pretty new to EasyGPS, however, the main differences I see between the two is that in transferring waypoints to your GPS EasyGPS allows some manipulation of the data. You can send cache ID# and name or cache Id# and decrypted hints to your unit. (Mines a Venture HC, maybe others allow more or less changes/info?)

 

Now on the map side, EasyGPS doesn't display a base map or anything, it just shows the caches in their relative positions to each other. On Mapsource I have Topo 2008 installed so when I look at it the image is just like looking at it on my GPS. Plus, Mapsource is how I transfer bits of the Topo map to my Venture HC.

 

So for me, I'll probably just use EasyGPS to transfer the waypoints (caches) into my GPS. That way I could see the hints because I don't really need to see the name of the cache, just its ID for logging purposes. And for looking at where I have been, where caches are, or any kind of mapping stuff, I'll use Mapsource. As I become more familiar with EasyGPS, I'm sure I'll find it does a lot more that I just don't know about right now, so my thoughts could change [].

 

Hope this helps.

[+sim_v]

Lastest version of easyGPS continues to perfectly run under windows 2000 (XP & vista only officially).

[+Renegade Knight]

EasyGPS is a simple, user-friendly, plane Jane software to manage waypoints. ...

 

This is exactly why I love it. It puts waypoints on my GPS. I don't need anything else out of it so for my purpose it works great. When I upgrade I truly hope it will still be tha simple to get my GPX file into my paperless GPS.