andymiller wrote:I've used both City Navigator and Garmin Topo and OSM - I prefer OSM and although occasionally I find it useful to have City Navigator I wouldn't buy it again. (although I might reconsider if Garmin ever changes its stupid licensing policies - see below).
Autorouting is always going to be trial-and-error: until someone builds maps that reliably distinguish between quiet A roads and busy A roads than you are always going to find yourself in positions where the auto routing either sends you down a road you'd rather have avoided or on a detour when the main road would have been fine. Whichever map you use you have to use your brain. Yes OSM has occasional annoying points but these are relatively few and far between.
Bear in mind that:
- if you buy it on SD card City Navigator takes up the memory card slot and will stop you using it for other maps and or POIs and tracks/routes (although most modern gpses have a fairly generous amount of internal memory);
- if you buy it on DVD you can only install the maps on one device (thanks Garmin - that's another reason why I won't buy it again);
- it's not topographic. Personally I find the contour lines useful - it means I can have the best of both worlds.
City Navigator comes with a pretty good database of POIs but OSM is catching up very fast (and arguably has already caught up - if you want to find drinking water I bet you'll be better off with OSM).
(for the benefit of anyone who is confused by this thread, OSM stands for Open Street Map (link is to Wikipedia) while OS stands for Ordnance Survey - for the differences between them see andrew_s's post, but perhaps the most important difference is that OSM maps are usually free).tatanab wrote:This is all new to me. I do not do routes, I just go so I want mobile mapping when on tour. So next year's tour will be my first experience but by playing around with the Etrex at home I am not convinced it is going to be of any use to me. I await the result with bated breath.
Why would it not do what you want? You have a map in front of you and an arrow that tells you where you are on the map. If you need more detail just zoom in. If you want to get fancy you can do things like have a compass.
A gps will provides you with the ability to carry detailed maps of entire countries, entire continents even. Not to mention the ability to search through a database with hundreds of thousands of Points of Interest from campsites to hospitals. These are huge huge advantages: I really don't understand why people* seem to be so fixated with auto-routing. (*not you).
For route planning and for giving you and overview a 'paper' map is always going to have the advantage (unless there's a gale blowing). I always carry both; as someone (not me) put it: carry a gps to tell you where you are and a paper map to plan where you want to go.
Thanks for this post Andy, very grateful, you're very knowledgeable and i've learned a lot from your postings,
When people mention 'routable', I presume they mean to enter a location (from the users current one) and have this device work out the best route (bit like a tom tom)?
I just looked on talkierooster site and it seems the UK is mapped on there but not Europe? Also some versions were only paid for, presumably better quality?
Good advice with not relying totally on GPS especially with routing, do you carry physical maps as well? OS ones?
