This may already be answered somewhere, but I can't find it. Is there a reason to pay for Garmin's 24k topo map versus just downloading it for free here? I live in the northeast, and there seems to be a good free 24k map available here. What advantages are there to buying Garmin's?
The mapsets available here are usable on Garmin GPSrs; they are not Garmin products nor copies of Garmin products. What data sources Garmin uses to build their mapsets nd what they include in them is differenct than what is freely available for us to use to make mapsets. Much of what Garmin can do tech wise has not been reversed engineered. If you want address searching and/or 3D elevation views, you would need a Garmin product which can do so. Although the OpenStreetMap project is offering routable maps (as does Garmin), none of the mapauthors here are doing so.
Thanks, that helps a lot. I really didn't understand the difference, but it sounds like there is enough of one for me to consider the Garmin published maps.
Quote from: maps4gps on January 04, 2011, 02:48:08 PM
Although the OpenStreetMap project is offering routable maps (as does Garmin), none of the mapauthors here are doing so.
Not quite true, two of the maps I've posted are routable, but they're of limited areas, and making routable maps is way to much work to do for an area as large as a state with the software I use.
Thanks for the correction. I was thinking of State, regional, and US mapsets.
Garmin's 24k maps use the same Navteq roads as their City Navigator products. They support address search and have rich POI databases of things like restaurants, gas stations and stores.
No free maps support address search (you cannot route to 123 Main Street) or large databases of POI for commercial establishments.