Newbie, question on Maps

[LisaAposMT]

Hello, a newbie here, or perhaps a geomuggle…
I just got my GPS and I have some questions regarding maps. I bought a Garmin Vista CX and I have been playing with it, getting comfortable. I know that I need to use it for city mapping also…i.e. I need street maps. Where do you find maps and which ones are best for purchasing? Do you need special ones for city areas? 😯

I live in Muskego and am looking forward to getting out for my first search! 🙂

Lisa

[Team Deejay]

As I’m sure you have discovered, the base maps on Garmin’s are pretty pathetic. If you want a true road map, the only package compatible with the Vista Cx is City Navigator. This also allows you to do PC based routing and download the routes to the GPS. (This GPS does not do “on the fly” autorouting.) If you are cheap (like me) and willing to put up with an occasional out of date street you can get the TOPO USA package for about half the price. This also provides topographic data and other geographic features useful for off road navigation (like powerlines, USGS marsh data, and the like. It doesn’t do autorouting (at least not very well!) on the PC, but you can use other software for that (MS S&T, Street Atlas USA, Google Earth, etc.)

Here is an example of the TOPO USA Map:

Notice the contour lines as the Highway Y climbs the hill to the NW, and the marsh information around Big Muskego Lake.

Here is an example of City Navigator:

Similar, but no geographic data and this one does a better job with the park boundaries (at least around Muskego.)

Finally, while not “technically” compatible, I think the Metroguide maps will work as well. They look similar to the city navigator maps. If you are leaning this way, I would borrow a disk from someone who already has it to ensure that it will actually work.

The advantage to the Metroguide maps is that they are not “Locked” (nor are the TOPO maps.) City Navigator uses a copy protection system where the initial CD contains permissions for uploading to two different GPSs. If you have more than two GPSs, or you get a new GPS, you will need to buy a new license for the new GPS. Metroguide and TOPO US maps can be used on as many GPSs as you like. This means that you have to be VERY careful buying used copies of City Navigator, as you could end up buying a copy without a working license. No such worries exist for the other two packages.
You can find TOPO US and Metroguide from http://www.gpsdiscount.com for under $80. The cheapest I’ve seen City Navigator for is $120, but you can probably do a little better if you try.

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