what GPS do you have

[Dave]

I have a Clarion GPS stereo and a Navman N60 I think it is.

Dave.

 

[michael740]

I played around hacking a mio 520 with a bought copy of ozi ce and it all worked fine while I was testing it, but as soon as I hit the tracks it failed me. This happened a couple of times so I cracked it and bought a VMS tourer for $600. IMHO the VMS is great, it runs excellent street mapping and came loaded with memory map and full ozi all with maps.
$600 is a big ask but so far it has not failed and gets a good lock under canopies so I think sometimes it is good to DIY but factory stuff will always be better for ME in the long run as I can be technically challenged.

 

[the_bluester]

Although - truth be told - that isn't always the case. My Navman - yes, I own one and this is why I'll never buy another - doesn't know where Canberra is. I set it as a destination so I can see how far to go, and it asked me to turn left just near Mittagong onto this tiny country single-lane road. It wouldn't re-path either - it insisted that I "perform a u-turn when possible" for kilometres, until I turned the stupid thing off.

We have a Navman S90I that we got really cheap with out of date maps and stuck new maps on. I would only use it to help me along somewhere really unfamiliar (Like going to Sydney, I live near Melbourne)

The unit is a bit of an idiot, set from home to go through to the other side of Melbourne It warns me or an unsealed road on the route it has selected, there is no unsealed road in any even halfway sensible place along the route, so either the new maps have some road attributes set incorrectly or it is routing me somewhere insane. And if I ignore that issue, it wants me to go one way which is sort of OK to get from home to the Hume Freeway, but if I ignore that turn and go my normal way (Which is faster) it then tries to send me down a string of unsealed roads that I know DON'T connect to the Hume. And that is with the route planning setting to avoid unsealed roads set.

I rarely use the GPS in Melbourne as I am pretty familiar with the place and can get to most suburbs without even pulling out the Melways, I generally use it to look up a street address in the suburb. With what mine tries to do I can really see how people get themselves in strife out int he country, taking their little Mazda 3 up a fire trail because the GPS said so. You do wonder why people follow them so blindly though.

The unit in my Xtrail seems a lot better and a lot less inclined to insist on doing a U turn if you disobey. It pretty much just recalculates a new route as soon as you ignore where it said to turn. Still don't use it much though.

 

[Old.Tony]

I like the iGo in my dash, except for one thing, and my wife's Tom Tom (brand new at the time) did the same.

We were in Penshurst, Victoria and heading for nearby Hamilton. We could see it on the map, but we wanted to stick it in the GPS so we could see how long it would take us to get there, we wanted to breakfast there.

Neither of our GPS units knew where Hamilton Vic is. When we got there, it could display "Hamilton" on the map so we knew what town we were in, but it couldn't guide us there.

Does anyone else have this sort of problem in Vic?

We were just north of Penshurst when this pic was taken...

You can see by the time stamp that we were up early and looking for a place to eat. Turns out we arrived in Hamilton at about 7am and stopped in a cul-de-sac near an old steam loco and ate before continuing on.

Surprisingly, it didn't look like the town had sprung up in the last couple of months, so we had no idea why neither GPS could guide us there.

 

[KraftyPg]

One of my old Mio's that uses Sensus maps lost a town in SA. I can't remember which town (it's in one of my threads here) but it basically just decided one town didn't exist and in it's place was a huge black hole that couldn't be driven across so it tried to detour me around it. We were traveling convoy with my parents at the time and they'd been on the roads we were traveling but I wasn't that familiar with them so when my GPS told me something silly like 300ks to the next town and mum's paper maps in the leading car said 50k it sparked the old technology v paper debate over the cb's. We had many debates about how right or wrong the GPS was on that trip which was just further proof that you can't live without paper.

I am however interested in the new range of Hand held HDD devices, the ones I'm looking at don't come with GPS software but they do come with a USB port so with the large capacity hard drives in them if they will run the software and the dongle as well the Ipods will be getting used as frisbees and the indash stereo will be getting forgotten.

 

[Krankin]

I would say all software programs are far from perfect, especially mapping/directive ones, i have found.
Though I love having/using my GPS units more and more than not, I will always have handy paper maps, Melways, Vicroads and all my Feathertops.

 

[KraftyPg]

It really depends what your after, some of the topo maps work really good, they aren't made pretty because their not made for the consumer market GPS but they have all the roads and tracks on them and if your GPS can install them it can direct on them. They may not have spoken street names or POI's but they can still direct you to and from many places.

We first started playing with some of these maps and USB GPS back in the late 90's when the Aussie maps came on 14 CD's but the technology has improved and the mapping software is a little bit more usable these days. It's not entirely practical for car use at all times but some of it can be extremely useful compared to current commercial GPS units.

 

[Krankin]

now that u mention it, I've just install Garmin Topo Australia to my lappy and registered and unlocked it for my Garmin 1490T unit and it shows its unlocked on the garmin site when i log in to my account.
Though when i open the map install prog so i can put it on a card for my gps unit the program comes up with the topo software is locked and its program to unlock it wont unlock it GRRRRRR
200bucks for a dvd that wont fn work and another 200 for the same dvd for my handheld unit that i havent tried yet GRRRR

 

[KraftyPg]

Surely if you paid for it there would be some sort of support. I've not used Garmin myself but even the most basic of warranties covers defective software.

 

[Krankin]

Garmin Aust only have phone support so i have to try during the week during office hours.
They are hopeless knowall's though as i argued with one of their support shiela's before as their website showed features on a GPS unit,
thats one of the reasons i bought it, but mine did'nt have one of those feature's I wanted and she swore black and blue that i was mistaken and after a few stern words by me she finally looked up the garmin site and found i was right...stupid bitch.

anyways, will have to go through something similar again i suppose.

 

[KraftyPg]

I feel sorry for phone support staff, been there done that many years ago and it wasn't pleasant then. To be honest I don't know what I'd do if I was phone support these days and I got a hot head like myself ring up and bitch about something not working.

 

[Krankin]

to be totally honest, i will never start it off with me being an asshole as they seem to think everyone is,
but when u start off cool and u know you are right and they blantantly tell you u are wrong, well thats when it turns to shit.

 

[KraftyPg]

I find it always turns bad when people are too pigheaded to admit I am right.

 

[Krankin]

yep .



.

 

[equipt]

I got the Garmin Topo maps on a micro SD card from the RACV shop in Ballarat for $50, they work great on my Garmin 255W

 

[d22dave]

I got the Garmin Topo maps on a micro SD card from the RACV shop in Ballarat for $50, they work great on my Garmin 255W

How detailed are they around wombat sf and creswick sf thanks

 

[equipt]

How detailed are they around wombat sf and creswick sf thanks

Not too bad, I have only done a little bit around Creswick SF with them, I found them quite good in Wombat, and they where 100% out around the Pyreneese ranges when I was up there last weekend, we even found a few tracks with the topo maps that where so grown over we drove past twice when we where looking for them judging by the paper maps. I find them great for what I do, you have to go into the map data section and turn off the normal road maps and just leave the topo map selected for them to show up properly.

 

[d22dave]

Not too bad, I have only done a little bit around Creswick SF with them, I found them quite good in Wombat, and they where 100% out around the Pyreneese ranges when I was up there last weekend, we even found a few tracks with the topo maps that where so grown over we drove past twice when we where looking for them judging by the paper maps. I find them great for what I do, you have to go into the map data section and turn off the normal road maps and just leave the topo map selected for them to show up properly.

thanks for that starting to think i need (read want) a gps in the nav

 

[Krankin]

Surely if you paid for it there would be some sort of support. I've not used Garmin myself but even the most basic of warranties covers defective software.

Rang Johnny Appleseed today a couple of times and got it sorted out.
Mapping is unlocked now both in my online Garmin account and on the pc installed software,
though if I didnt get some help from them, one would never work it out as its not in any manuals, faq's or anywhere i could access.
I even asked where that particular info could be found just incase i was having a ''blonde moment'' and the reply was its just a trick of the trade as they say.

 

[KraftyPg]

Rang Johnny Appleseed today a couple of times and got it sorted out.
Mapping is unlocked now both in my online Garmin account and on the pc installed software,
though if I didnt get some help from them, one would never work it out as its not in any manuals, faq's or anywhere i could access.
I even asked where that particular info could be found just incase i was having a ''blonde moment'' and the reply was its just a trick of the trade as they say.

Glad you got it all sorted. I was going to look into my GPS mapping system this week since I got some maps today but the jobs going to have to take a back seat for a while since I've just been handed several new jobs I can't ignore.