Customer Reviews

Garmin MetroGuide CD ROM (France)

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I used this product in conjunction with the eTrex Vista unit, on a recent vacation to the UK. Traveling by train, I used the product mainly to navigate on foot in the various cities I visited. I found the pre-programmed waypoints of tourist sites, train stations, and even London tube stops, to be extremely accurate. As for the accuracy of the waypoints I uploaded by street address, it varied bit, but was still good enough to easily get me where I needed to go. My only real disappointment was with the granularity of the mapping data, as it is selected for upload. For the purposes of this feature, the country is divided into large sections, and I had cases where to get one city, I had to upload a large section containing several megabytes of data I wouldn't use. This of course tied up precious memory that kept me from uploading the data for other cities. Still, I found this to be a workable limitation since I could use the PC based maps to preprogram routes and waypoints for all the places I knew I would want to visit, regardless of their map section.

All things considered, this product greatly enhanced my vacation. Saving me the frustration of burying my head in maps, and hunting for the elusive European street sign, this product virtually eliminated one of the biggest headaches of what is meant to be a relaxing time.

The Metroguide software for France is more useful than the US version. The maps seem more up to date, and, due to the difficulty of finding anything in France, much more useful. I managed to find our company's new building in a new town by punching in the address, and I was able to use my emap to find it in 10 minutes from the train station. It also seems to have up to date restaurant and attraction info for Paris and other areas.

I made the mistake of ordering this product along with a new Garmin Etrex Vista a week before a UK trip. Garmin does not sell it any more. It's a WINDOWS 95, 98, NT 4.0 product. Not even NT 4.1, not less Windows 2000 or XP. The packaging mentions only GPSes that Garmin used to sell, none that they currently sell. It's a 1999 product, based on 1995 map data. ALL of the products with a European country name in them (France, Great Britain, etc) are OUTDATED! DO NOT BUY! See the Garmin site.

Garmin will charge you ...plus shipping to upgrade to the current product, which Amazon doesn't even appear to sell. Even this offer expires on August 31, then you are completely stuck.

In short, I trusted Amazon to know their stuff, and they cheated me. I guess they laid off their GPS guru. Very surprised and disappointed.

Garmin do not make this any more. All the European maps have been combimed into a single CD package.