Comments on: Garmin Announces BaseCamp™, hints at 1:24k Topos on DVD

By: brad hampton

brad hampton — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:33:25 +0000

Thank you for contacting Garmin International.
The 76s would not be compatible with the 24K Topo maps. You would want to use a color unit with these maps anyhow to access the features it has to offer.

With Best Regards,
Shawn V
Product Support Specialist
2nd Shift Outdoor/Fitness Team
Garmin International

Brad, thanks for your suggestions, I’ll be happy to forward them for you to engineering and cartography suggestion box. The 24K maps on DVD will work with your 76s, the ones on pre programmed data card will not work unfortuantely.

With Best Regards,
Brock A
Product Support Specialist
Outdoor/Fitness Team
Garmin International

interesting emails
I hope the DVD I ordered will work.

the GPS system as a whole is not going to change for some years so GPS accuricy will not change much, so not to compete gps makers are going to improve other stuff like there maps which are mostly pretty poor.
there are so many improvements I would like to see.
maybe some day garmin will have a system where users can update maps and the gos will have a user map layer in it.
brad

By: Garmin BaseCamp Released - GPS Fix

Garmin BaseCamp Released - GPS Fix — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:47:45 +0000

[...] Garmin BaseCamp 2.0.4 Released Mar.30, 2009 in Garmin Garmin has released the first public version of BaseCamp for PC platforms. BaseCamp is Garmin’s new outdoor-centric mapping software. Similar to Mapsource you can view your Garmin maps (as long as they include DEM) on your computer and do things like view 3D terrain, plot tracks, and analyze elevation profiles. I’ve downloaded BaseCamp to try it out with Topo USA 2008 and while the 3D views and elevation plots are interesting it is very slow on my laptop and I’ve managed to crash it several times. I haven’t tried the geocaching support, trackdraw and geotagging features which Garmin promised when BaseCamp was announced. [...]

By: Leaked: Camera Equipped Garmin Oregon 500 - GPS Fix

Leaked: Camera Equipped Garmin Oregon 500 - GPS Fix — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:39:48 +0000

[...] Given that Garmin has announced geotagging support in their forthcoming BaseCamp software it would make sense that these new units will have built in geotagging support. Note [...]

By: Garmin Releases Topo U.S. 24K on DVD, First Screen Shots of BaseCamp - GPS Fix

Garmin Releases Topo U.S. 24K on DVD, First Screen Shots of BaseCamp - GPS Fix — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:38:43 +0000

[...] 2009 in GPSMAP 60CSx, Garmin Colorado, Garmin Oregon, Garmin eTrex About a month ago when Garmin announced BaseCamp, they also hinted that the Topo U.S. 24K maps, currently available only in microSD format, would [...]

By: Garmin 1:24K Topos on Regional DVDs, GB Discoverer Improvements, New Belt Clip - GPS Fix

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:52:02 +0000

[...] will be available this quarter for around $130. Garmin made some confusing statements in their BaseCamp press release earlier this week about the US 1:24k Topo maps on DVD, but hopefully this will [...]

By: BBesse

BBesse — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:50:16 +0000

And of course us poor souls in Canada are left out again. Garmin sells CND Topos, out of date as they may be, but no support. I guess Great Britian is out to, and Garmin sells their topos too.

Mapsource is ou of date, it doesn’t support some features of the Colorado or Oregons and I suspect the Edge series too.

My $0.02CDN worth.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:18:08 +0000

I just updated the post since GPS Business News is reporting that that the 1:24K Topos will be made available as 4 regional DVDs for $99/each.

@benh57, I understand the starting from new arguement (been doing s/w development for 20 years) but there is also a cost to maintaining multiple utilities unless Garmin is planning to do away with Mapsource which is hard to believe.

My suspicion is that BaseCamp may either be distributed under a slightly different license and may not have certain features that Mapsource does (it obviously will have features Mapsource doesn’t as well). If so, that’s a pain because that means I have to install and maintain two tools instead of one.

By: benh57

benh57 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:22:57 +0000

“Why not just update mapsource” — well, it may well be just an updated, renamed mapsource.

But if you’ve ever worked in software development (and it sounds like you haven’t), you know how crufty old codebases can be. Mapsource is verrry old. Often, it can be easier to scrap it all and start over than shoehorn advanced stuff in.

MapSource was getting pretty crufty and it showed. A new start is good.