Customer Reviews

Garmin MapSource 2008 Topographical U.S. Map DVD-Rom

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

First, I'm not knocking the TOPO US too much. It is expensive and does not have high resolution but it fills a niche. If you need a TOPO map in a hurry, I suppose it is the best alternative.

I've had my Garmin Legend HCx for several months now. During this time, I've hunted for a reliable alternative to TOPO US, rendering 24K resolution and not limited to a few National Parks.

Looking really paid off. The best solution that I've found is the following:

* Free Maps from USGS Seamless Server (24K TOPOs as GeoTiff files) $0
* Any graphics editor program that can handle .tif format $0
* Mapwell (Basic) Google to find (includes raster/vector conversion) $45
* TrackMaker (free version) Google to find $0

Total: $45

Process:
1. Search, select, download GeoTiff map from USGS Seamless Server (15 minutes)

NOTE ADDED 4/2010: Mapwell Basic can now read coordinates on GeoTiff files, making steps 2,3, and part of 4 obsolete.

2. Review the .xml data, downloaded with the map to determine the extent of the map: Northwest and Southeast boundary. (5 minutes)
3. Open GeoTiff file in graphics editor. Save as new .tif file, stripping out the embedded geo data. (5 minutes)
4. Open the new .tif file in Mapwell. Add extent information from Step 2. Add graphics features and waypoints(optional). Run vectorization option, creating a new set of Garmin IMG files (10 minutes - more if you want to add your own art)
5. Upload new map set into Garmin. Mapwell has a great Garmin upload/download manager. No need to use Mapsource although you can use it to add Mapsource maps. (1 minute)

Time burned: 36 minutes

TrackMaker (free version or licensed) is also a great product for creating tracks, waypoints, many more features. It also has a fine Garmin upload/download manager. So you can either load waypoints and features directly into the Garmin or embed them in the map itself while using Mapwell.

The only disadvantage that I've discovered in the process is that Mapwell works too well. That is, the vectorization of 24K maps produces superb quality maps that take 10-20 seconds to render in the Garmin (at 1 mile). The closer in you go, the faster the rendering.

TOPO 2008 has some good points: it's half the price of most of Garmin's other cartography products, and it doesn't require an unlock code. Read some of the reviews on Garmin's "City Navigator North America" product - there are some real horror stories about the problems people have had with Garmin's unlock code system.
NOTE: In specific discussion of how TOPO 2008 interfaces with a GPS, the unit used in this review is a Garmin 60CX.

What you get with TOPO USA 2008 that's good:
1. It adds a lot of city streets and county roads that are not included in the base map. However, the positional accuracy of these roads is often pretty bad. But at least having them would probably help you find an address if you got lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood or rural area. Unfortunately though, the road network in TOPO 2008 IS NOT AUTO-ROUTEABLE. In other words, if you try to generate a point-to-point trip route in either MapSource or in the GPS itself, the route will not follow the roads or calculate turns. It will just make a strait line (actually a Great Circle curve) from Point "A" to Point "B". This doesn't prevent you from generating your own routes manually, of course. I guess the lack of auto-route capability is why TOPO 2008 is half the price of City Navigator.
2. Since TOPO 2008 contains a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the coverage area, it allows you to generate a profile of your hiking/biking trail or road trip route. This profile capability is very nice when comparing alternate routes, and the profiles can be generated and viewed in the GPS or on the PC in MapSource
3. The outlines of many coastlines, lakes, and rivers in the basemap are very coarse and downright inaccurate - TOPO 2006 offers a huge improvement to these outlines (but does not include water depth).
4. TOPO 2008 includes thousands of searchable place names and POI's that are not in the base map.

What's not so good in TOPO 2008:
1. The coverage area is ONLY the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). Unfortunately, there is no coverage in Canada or Mexico, other than large cities and major highways that are already in the basemap. If you need coverage of our neighbor to the north, the TOPO Canada DVD is pretty expensive at $110, almost double the price of the USA version.
2. The contour interval is 1:100,000, which is probably fine for planning an automobile trip, but is very coarse if you are doing a hiking or bicycle trip. Garmin does offer 1:24,000 cartography, but it's expensive and covers only a limited set of National Parks. If TOPO 2008 were to cover the whole USA at 1:24,000, the amount of data would probably require many DVD's instead of only 1, and the retail price would no doubt be a lot more, so I guess the 1:100,000 scale is adequate for most users, and certainly more economical.

If you already own the City Navigator cartography, TOPO 2008 might be a nice addition to your chartplotter-capable Garmin GPS, especially if it can display route profiles like the 60CX. However, if your primary need is for automobile routing, and especially if you need coverage in Canada, and if you have a limited budget, you would be better off buying City Navigator if you don't already own it. It's twice the price of TOPO 2008, but has a lot more capability.

NOTE: For some reason, TOPO 2008 includes Alaska's Dalton Highway, from Fairbanks to Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay), yet City Navigator, which costs twice as much and is supposed to offer coverage of all of the USA and Canada, does not.

SUMMARY: A good value at $59.10 if you just want to upgrade your GPS's background map, and if you don't require Canadian coverage. Also a nice add-on if you already have City Navigator, as it allows you to compute road profiles anywhere in the USA (including Alaska and Hawaii). City Navigator does not have a terrain model built in, so it can not show profiles on it's own. For owners of large RV's or people who tow large boat or livestock trailers over long distances, TOPO 2008's road profile capabilities could be a really nice trip planning tool.

I have been using DeLorme Topo USA to create trail routes and waypoints for hiking and backpacking trips for a number of years. I have also been using eTrex for GPS navigation for almost the same amount of time (I am now using Vista Cx). Recently, I purchased Garmin Topo U.S. 2008, hoping to save time to find/create trails and waypoints. But, I was wrong. Although the resolution and price of Garmin and DeLome products are about the same, Garmin Topo U.S. 2008 is a big disappointment. I spend more time with Garmin Topo U.S. 2008 to find trails and create waypoints. Below are my observations.

- It's impossible to find trails till you zoom in into about 1 mile resolution. Then, you loose a big picture of an entire trail. Also, it's very difficult to distinguish trails from roads and elevation contours - a display contrast is quite bad.

- Since it does not have a capability of selecting trail segments, it requires to manually creates a number of waypoints to follow the trail, to plot an elevation profile along the trail, and to estimate an accurate trail distance. This is time consuming.

- It seems that via-points of a trail are displayed with the names in the comment field. Also, the names are not editable. This makes the via-point names/numbers are not consecutive if new via points are inserted later. The eTrex Cx displays the names of all via points and gets quite cluttered.

- It does not have a 3D display feature. DeLorme Topo USA provides nice 3D plots.

Overall, I do not recommend this product.

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.

This is what the topo software should have been to start. Garmin has updated the topo to properly match the USGS maps. When you are hiking or similar the topography properly represents the actual terrain. A major difference is areas that have significant elevation gain were always improperly represented in the old product. The 2008 version is correct now and you can see ridge lines and valleys as they should be. This was well worth the $ spent and I highly advise that you upgrade today!

After loading Garmin MapSource Topo U.S. 2008 mid-Atlantic region maps into my new Garmin 60CSx GPS I realized that my plotted position routinely had a 300-600 foot error from my known position in the Northern Virginia and DC-metro Maryland areas, over at least a 25 square mile area. When I called Garmin they told me that their cartographic dept. was aware of the problem, and ascribed it to "map digitization" problems. Garmin would not comment on any fixes planned.

A GPS - map system which is routinely in error by 300-600 feet is unacceptable!!! And a GPS company which doesn't take errors like this seriously is not serious about their product.

This software provides topo maps for the entire US for less than $60, which seems like a bargain to me. The maps do not have the detail of USGS 7.5 minute series maps but generally have enough detail for hiking, biking, or off-road driving. The maps actually look better on a GPS than on my PC using MapSource, because the roads are better distinguished from the contour lines.
The only problem I had installing the software is that it turns off the detail in MapSource. To correct this you need to go to the View menu and click "Show GPS Map Detail" (Ctrl+G).

This is a wonderful addition to my Garmin Venture HC, and really completes the package, since the basemap is not all that useful.

The software took a while to install, and I do have some minor quibbles about the installation. Users are "strongly" recommended to install MapSource into C:\Garmin (come on, people, the Program Files folder has been around since Windows 95). My translation is that if you decide to change the default folder, some things may not work correctly. Also, there was no option to leave the map data on the DVD instead of loading the *entire* 3.5GB database onto your hard disk. But if you've got the available space, it's more convenient to have it all there.

As has been noted before, there are some minor inaccuracies with the map data (from what I've noticed, mostly related to roads showing a hundred feet next to where I'm driving), and for being a 2008 map, it doesn't show the latest freeway construction in my area. But then again, I didn't get this map to show me how to get around town; nonetheless, street data is remarkably detailed for a topo map. Mountains, canals and other features were accurately displayed as I drove past them, including elevation data.

MapSource's archaic and sometimes oddly behaving user interface notwithstanding, it is quite intuitive when it comes to downloading maps. Without reading the manual, it took me all of a minute to figure out how to select map regions and send them to my GPS. Downloading roughly 20MB also didn't take as long as I'd feared, perhaps another minute or two. The area I can fit in my Venture's limited memory also exceeded my expectations: I live in Arizona, which is quite large, and yet I was able to easily download a large swath that includes Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Show Low.

All in all, a good product and in my opinion an essential add-on to any Garmin mapping GPS. Subtracted 1 star for less-than-stellar user interface and installation procedure.

I would have to agree with "working engineer." This software is worse than useless due to its positional inaccuracy. I was shocked to find that my 76csx showed the location of my house as several hundred feet from its actual location. A downloaded track of a run in a local park showed this same "offset." I tried an experiment: created a waypoint by standing in the middle of an intersection in my neighborhood, then downloading it. The MapSource Topo US 2008 software showed an offset error of about 800 feet. Google earth showed it dead on (so I knew it wasn't a problem with the GPS unit itself). My older version of NG's Topo! also shows this waypoint at its proper location at the intersection. Interestingly enough, Delorme Topo 6.0 has the same offset error as the Garmin mapping software.

I purchased Topo 2008 because it has both road and topo data, and can upload both to my GPS unit. After some use, I found that the maps are off by roughly 1/3 city block (software shows me as just north of where I actually am). Furthermore, I found both gaps (missing stretches of road) and mislabeled roadways when looking at the stretch between I-405 south and Ross Island bridge (HW26) in downtown Portland, OR. The combination of missing roadway and mislabeled roadway in this stretch was bad enough that I had to use MapQuest instead. Hopefully I just encountered the only such case of this. If accuracy and completeness of road data are critical for you, spend your money elsewhere.

I gave it three stars because in all other cases it's been close enough, and I am enjoying getting topo maps into my unit.