Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Tell me which GPS you guys using them all the time would consider the best and for what reasons. Pro's and Con's.

Purely for offroad use that is. Not interested in this street navigation shit.

Mate check out www.gpsaustralia.net

There's heaps of info, including a forum. It's a relatively new place, but with alot of seasoned members. Oh, and I know the owner.....

It has an online store too.

My 2c worth..
Garmin are user friendly in the menus but they just keep breaking. I'm on my third GPS 72 under warranty and wondering when it will break again. I also have an old Magellan GPS2000 which hasn't missed a beat in ten years.
If you have the spare cash, I can recommend the mapping ones - otherwise without a topo map you don't know where you are anyway....

I have had a Garmin GPSMAP76CS for the last few months. It does everything I need, and very easy to learn.

FX324 but trying to find one is

I have a Magellan Meridian Colour, with the street maps.
most off road tracks are on it also so its great, shows you the name of the track you are on and any intersection you are approaching.

only thing it won't do in Oz is navigate, in other words it wont tell you where to turn left and right to get somewhere.
In the USA it can as they have the right software/map for it.

had one problem since I bought it, just needed a reset and it was good as new.

The inlaws have a recent/current? model Magellan (of some sort- I don't know the model ) that they bought the optional Discover Aus maps for. I have never in my life seen such a user unfriendly setup! Loading the maps is a right PITA - you can't load the whole of Australia as one file (instead it works out to around 7-8 smaller files) and you have to manually load different maps off the SD card when you leave the current section of mapping.... Loading the maps onto the GPS from the PC literally takes an eternity too.

It also can only interface to a PC via an old style serial connection (no USB port) Try finding a laptop that's still got one of them on it!

Unless they've improved their models in the last three months I would steer clear. BTW I don't know if Garmin are any better in any of the above aspects?

murcod wrote:The inlaws have a recent/current? model Magellan (of some sort- I don't know the model ) that they bought the optional Discover Aus maps for. I have never in my life seen such a user unfriendly setup! Loading the maps is a right PITA - you can't load the whole of Australia as one file (instead it works out to around 7-8 smaller files) and you have to manually load different maps off the SD card when you leave the current section of mapping.... Loading the maps onto the GPS from the PC literally takes an eternity too.

It also can only interface to a PC via an old style serial connection (no USB port) Try finding a laptop that's still got one of them on it!

Unless they've improved their models in the last three months I would steer clear. BTW I don't know if Garmin are any better in any of the above aspects?

You can buy a serial-USB converter, I and some mates have the same setup and seems to work OK

I transfer to the SD card via a card reader.
The retailers dont recommend that you transfer through the serial cable...

yes you have to change map on the SD card as you can only save them in a max size file, i think its 16meg.

Yes, 16 meg per map section sounds right. So 256 / 16 = about 16 individual maps- so I was wrong saying 7-8 maps. (256Mb is the minimun sized card to fit all of Australia on.)

I'm also aware you can get USB to serial convertors. The inlaws bought one and it doesn't seem to work on their HP laptop with the Magellan for some reason? Communications between the two could not be established.

I ended up directly downloading the maps onto the SD card via the laptop's built in card reader and even then it was taking around 15 minutes per map section to process onto the SD card. 16 sections x 15 mintues is still an eternity IMHO. I can only imagine how slow it would be downloading via the serial cable!

After experiencing all that there's NO WAY I'd buy one.

i use magellen platuim and mate have the colours. i reckon there great we have done plenty of offroading with them and they have had all tracks we have been on. its best to load maps via card reader as it only take seconds and and has like topo style maps on it. much better that the garmin etrex that my brother had but changed to a magellen.

Ruggers, so on your PC you can open the DiscoverAus program, select a 16Mb section off the Australian map, process it and load it onto the SD card in "seconds"?

murcod wrote:Ruggers, so on your PC you can open the DiscoverAus program, select a 16Mb section off the Australian map, process it and load it onto the SD card in "seconds"?

I think what he means is, you process the maps on the pc's HD into 16meg blocks/files, and once you have processed the lot of them, copy them to the SD card.

Once you have processed them once and put the on the SD card, job done and no need to do it again.

But yeah, you need some processing speed to make things easier and quicker.

Strange about the magellan not communicating to the PC USB converter...

i brought the base model garmin etrex for my trip across the simpson, cheap as chips $150, it did what i wanted it to do, need to buy a pc interface to upload routs/waypoints as i now have rsi of the thumb.

wish i had have brought a higher level one now

-maps on the gps would be handy
-in open country reception is good however driving through bush/forest reception is lost
-good to buy a gps that an external antenna can be fitted, cannot confirm if external antenna's are better in forests

goto gps australia, they are very helpful

murcod wrote:
I'm also aware you can get USB to serial convertors. The inlaws bought one and it doesn't seem to work on their HP laptop with the Magellan for some reason? Communications between the two could not be established.

Just check what comm port it installs at - normally the USB adapters install at com 4 or there abouts - at least mine does, might have to tell the program what port it is on.

I use my for console programming and it has been reliable

Tom

the cheap one i bough off ebay doesn't handle extended character translation too well, and as a result doesn't support the garmin protocol and I wouldn't imagine it would work with magellan protocol either. It handles straight ascii communication well enough most of the time though.

murcod wrote:Ruggers, so on your PC you can open the DiscoverAus program, select a 16Mb section off the Australian map, process it and load it onto the SD card in "seconds"?

You can combine 4 x 16mb regions into 1 compiled map. It's the compiling of the map/region that takes a long time.

Once, you have compiled 1 map or 1 region, the next time you load that to a card takes only seconds, assuming you have a USB or USB2 card reader/writer.

If you have previously compiled a region, that file will be on the hard drive and you only need to "open" it again through the file menu in the Mapsend software.

Goto the Yahoo Meridian user group and they have all of this sort of info and tips.

Magellans rock once you've worked out the tricks.

murcod wrote:The inlaws have a recent/current? model Magellan (of some sort- I don't know the model ) that they bought the optional Discover Aus maps for. I have never in my life seen such a user unfriendly setup! Loading the maps is a right PITA - you can't load the whole of Australia as one file (instead it works out to around 7-8 smaller files) and you have to manually load different maps off the SD card when you leave the current section of mapping.... Loading the maps onto the GPS from the PC literally takes an eternity too.

If you get it fron gpsoz, they'll load it all up for you beforehand.

I'm very happy with the Magellan Colour. Map accuracy is only as good as the relevant govt agency, and a few roads/tracks in Qld are a bit off. Not sure whether the desert tracks module would provide much more that discoveraus.

Regards
Max P

Maxtd5def wrote:

murcod wrote:The inlaws have a recent/current? model Magellan (of some sort- I don't know the model ) that they bought the optional Discover Aus maps for. I have never in my life seen such a user unfriendly setup! Loading the maps is a right PITA - you can't load the whole of Australia as one file (instead it works out to around 7-8 smaller files) and you have to manually load different maps off the SD card when you leave the current section of mapping.... Loading the maps onto the GPS from the PC literally takes an eternity too.

If you get it fron gpsoz, they'll load it all up for you beforehand.

I'm very happy with the Magellan Colour. Map accuracy is only as good as the relevant govt agency, and a few roads/tracks in Qld are a bit off. Not sure whether the desert tracks module would provide much more that discoveraus.

Regards
Max P

No it doesn't, I don't think QLD authorities have any idea where their roads are.