canderson
Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2007
- Messages
- 13,359
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- TomTom Model(s)
- GO720, GO740, GO 1535, Via 1535, Via 1605, GO 52, GO 600, GO 620, GO 630, GO Discover, TomTom Bridge
Been gone for a couple of days, so missed the party.
+1 on Gator's suggestion about gpsfiledepot.com. Great source not only for the 24K topos, but I often find a lot of oddball specialty maps there or linked from there. Garmin used to be the real PITA for customization with their closed architecture, but in some ways it's now easier to work with their units than the TomTom. Things certainly have changed in the last couple of years.
As for vector maps: Was recently in Mexico for a week, and didn't want to pay TomTom's full boat for one week's use of Mexico maps of unknown quality. Loaded up the area that included Quintana Roo from OSM (Worldwide routable Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap) and had maps that I could use for road nav on my Dakota 20. I surely wish that TomTom's map format wasn't so bloody proprietary and difficult to reverse engineer.
I also find Basecamp slow as molasses. While it has some interesting new features, for the basic process of moving maps to the Oregon, MapSource was a lot faster. If all you really want to do is move the proprietary Garmin maps (vs. view and all the other features of either MapSource or BaseCamp), have a look at the much simpler MapInstall program from Garmin -> Garmin: MapInstall Updates & Downloads
+1 on Gator's suggestion about gpsfiledepot.com. Great source not only for the 24K topos, but I often find a lot of oddball specialty maps there or linked from there. Garmin used to be the real PITA for customization with their closed architecture, but in some ways it's now easier to work with their units than the TomTom. Things certainly have changed in the last couple of years.
As for vector maps: Was recently in Mexico for a week, and didn't want to pay TomTom's full boat for one week's use of Mexico maps of unknown quality. Loaded up the area that included Quintana Roo from OSM (Worldwide routable Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap) and had maps that I could use for road nav on my Dakota 20. I surely wish that TomTom's map format wasn't so bloody proprietary and difficult to reverse engineer.
I also find Basecamp slow as molasses. While it has some interesting new features, for the basic process of moving maps to the Oregon, MapSource was a lot faster. If all you really want to do is move the proprietary Garmin maps (vs. view and all the other features of either MapSource or BaseCamp), have a look at the much simpler MapInstall program from Garmin -> Garmin: MapInstall Updates & Downloads
