Garmin MapSource 2008 Topographical U.S. Map DVD-Rom
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin MapSource 2008 Topographical U.S. Map DVD-Rom
Customer Review: Topo 2008
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall a good product. It adds fantastic capability to my new Vista HCx for hiking, backpacking, and mountain biking. The ability to correlate location to a topo map quickly via the topo info on the GPS screen is really nice. Getting profile information from your trails is great too for those of us that are data geeks. This mapset makes the GPS far more usable in the backcountry.
The one negative I have for Topo 2008 is the lack of trails on it. It is missing major trails that I'm amazed Garmin could have missed. The Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide Trail are the major trails through Colorado, yet Garmin missed these and most other common trails. It has a few trails, but not what I'd expect from this software. That was very dissappointing.
All visual content in these maps is simply a static visual representation. None of it is an active element so you can't just tell the PC software or GPS to follow a trail. If you want a trail routing, you need to trace a track over it on the PC and download that as a Track or Route.
Customer Review: Wildly inaccurate street data
Summary: 2 Stars
As noted by other reviewers, the street data is often wildly inaccurate. In my neighborhood on the outskirts of Denver many (but not all) of the streets are off by several hundred feet. A nearby subdivision has been completely eliminated... but elsewhere Garmin has invented brand-new highways across the open prairie.
I asked Garmin customer support about this and I got a very convoluted reply. As far as I can tell what they're saying is "we goofed". Here's the full explanation (or lack thereof):
"The street data in Topo US 2008 is at a scale of roughly 1:25,000 whereas the rest of the Topo application is at a scale of 1:100,000. Therefore the roads will be off by a few hundred yards. The road info was added after the application had already been produced and is to be used as a reference only."
Funny that they say the road data is to be used "as a reference only". It seems like it shouldn't be used as any sort of reference at all.
In fairness to Garmin, the contour lines are pretty accurate.
Customer Review: worth to own, not worth to upgrade
Summary: 3 Stars
The Topo map contains a lot of terrain information that city map does not have.
It contains some (or some part of) main road and fire road, most of the trails hiker actually take, are missing.
But I still find it useful in that, although it cannot lead you on most of the road or ease you ploting the road on your PC during the planning, it can help you track the path you have passed, and gives you a general perspective what lies ahead to reach your destination.
This topo 2008 adds terrain shading (only when looking on the computer, not on GPS device), and has improves street name. For the latter, it is still way out dated or has many errors, that you better not reply on it for city navigating (navigating is not routing)
Note, the map does not contain routing data, so you cannot use it for auto routing on PC or GPS).
4 stars for those who does not own topo map, 2 stars for those trying to upgrade. That's why I give it a 3-star rating.
Customer Review: Great software
Summary: 4 Stars
I just got my first GPS, a hand held version (Garmin) in the fall and planned on using it mostly for hiking. I needed Topo information for the mountains I hike and this software is working very nicely for me. I would give it a 5 except that I have found several flaws in the road layouts and it has no trails in the Catskill Mountains of New York. I have used it hiking in the Catskills, the Grand Canyon, and in the Mojave preserve in CA with good results. It helps you see where you have been as well as you progress when traveling. I also use it considerably more often while driving and other then a handful of roads displayed incorrectly both in New Jersey and California it's been great for finding locations and for seeing where I've been. I also ran into a few shortcomings with regards to routing to locations but I don't know if that's an issue of this software or the GPS but it sometimes suggests routs that are not possible because the roads don't have an exit or similar errors.Customer Review: Wildly off track
Summary: 2 Stars
In my local area (San Francisco Peninsula) the correspondence between the Topo U.S. 2008 maps and physical reality are off by from 200 to 500 feet! When I play my tracks against Google Earth (a nice Mapsource feature, BTW) they are bang on, but way off on the Mapsource depiction. I'm very reluctant to trust my life to this inaccurate mapping product, even more so in sparsely populated and back country areas where the location of streams and cliffs would be important to know accurately.
I'm using the new eTrex Vista HCx unit which I like very much.
Compiling map sets to upload to the GPS can take hours if a lot of segments are involved, and there are limitations to the number of map segment and file sizes the unit will accept. So I bought three 1GB micro SD cards and can fit the entire US (lower 48 states) mapset in three chunks (West, Midwest and East), each with less than 2000 map segments and file size less than 1GB.