Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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198 of 205 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Decent mapping if you don't require auto-routing capability, August 25, 2007
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.
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136 of 139 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alternative to buying MapSource Topo 2008, June 29, 2008
First, I'm not knocking the TOPO US too much. It is expensive and does not have high resolution but it fills a small 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 (24K TOPOs as GeoTiff Digital Raster Graphics files) $0
* Any graphics editor program that can handle .tif format $0
* Mapwell - http://www.mapwel.biz (includes raster to vector conversion) $45
* TrackMaker (free version) - http://www.gpstm.com/ $0
Total: $45
Process:
1. Search, select, download GeoTiff map from http://seamless.usgs.gov/ (15 minutes)
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.
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83 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Garmin Topo US 2008 vs. DeLorme Topo USA, November 4, 2007
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.
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