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Wow, that's pretty terrible! Hope they get it sorted out... and then it sounds like they need a better disaster recovery strategy. 

For the past few days, whenever I try to access anything at globalmapper.com I just get a page saying "Sorry, this site is currently unavailable". That page is actually an image hosted at images-pw.secureserver.net.

Anyone know what is happening there? It's annoying because the help menu in the program sends you to their site, and that message is all the "help" that you receive. But I also get the same error if I try any url at globalmapper.com in my browser.  

I sure hope they haven't gone out of business!

To avoid accidentially ever overwriting the topo map that came on my 400t in the internal memory I renamed the factory topo gmapsupp.img file to "topo100k.img"

Hmm... your pre-installed map should not have ever been named gmapsupp.img. That name is reserved for files which mapsource uploads. The pre-loaded map is called gmapprom.img, which is the name that Garmin uses for any pre-loaded map such as City Navigator on the Nuvi series.

Personally I would not mess with that at all. It should be easy enough to avoid it. Mapsource will never over-write this file and it should stand out since it's 2.8GB.

Yes, now that the Oregon has extended map naming capability I am doing pretty much what you suggest. After loading a new map, I copy the file back to my computer and change the name to something descriptive like (for example) NJtopo.img. I have a growing collection of these on my computer now. Once you've done this with all your favorite maps, management is very easy. Just drag and drop the ones you want into the Oregon's internal memory or SD card. Then you can just delete the un-needed maps from the Oregon as long as you have copies on your hard drive.

As an alternative, you could use Sendmap20 (free download from cgpsmapper.com) to build your mapsets. You can simply save these to your hard drive using any name that you like and avoid the process of creating a gmapsupp.img file on the GPS or the SD card.

BTW, the new Nuvi 1200/1300/1400 series also support this, which is great. Too bad all Garmin units aren't this way.

I haven't them myself, but from what I've read, Garmin's 24k topo series also has fully routable Navteq roads and POI's. These maps are expensive - $100 for a few states and they don't have coverage for the whole US yet. But they might be worth a look.

BTW, MOAGU was originally created as sort of a "kludge" to put raster imagery on older Garmin GPS'es. The author has now brought us G-Raster which is what you have linked to. Haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but it looks very nice. I've been making maps in this new format myself using Globalmapper - you might be interested in some of these: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/byuser/282/

Enjoy your new Oregon, Garmin really got a lot of things right on this series.  

I am not much of a mapsource devotee either... but it certainly has its following. My thoughts are:

1. Sounds more like a limitation of Google Earth to me. You could create a bunch of waypoints in mapsource  by clicking on the map anywhere you want. These can all be exported together as a .gpx file. Same thing is true if you create the waypoints on your GPS itself - you can import them as a group. I have never seen any reason to do what you're doing, so I'm not sure what other software might help. Regardless, Mapsource can certainly import a .gpx file containing a whole set of waypoints. It does replace existing waypoints when you import a new file however.

2. Don't use POI loader so I don't know. Maybe you need to convert the POI's to a .gpx file?

3. Maybe I don't understand what you want? Every version of Mapsource I've seen has routing preferences (Edit > Preferences > Routing) which lets you do these things.

4. Yeah, that's just the way it is unfortunately. To force your desired route you will need to insert a lot of waypoints and use trial and error to figure out where. This is one reason why I almost never use it.

[aren't]

I think the trails will be routable. The issue is that there aren't many trails...

That map came out within the last month. I have only read one report about it over on Groundspeak and the user liked it.

I suppose "better" is subjective. I have not seen this map myself, but it does contain full routable roads, like the City Navigator maps. The files here (or most of them) are not routable and cannot be used to give you driving directions. I suspect that the POI's are much more extensive on the Garmin map, but don't know for sure. People have complained about a lack of trails on the 24k Garmin topo's, but I'm guessing this could also be an issue with the maps here since that data can be hard to come by.

The 24k topo's are copy protected since they contain Navteq data. If you purchase a pre-loaded data card then it can be used in any GPS, but it cannot be duplicated. If you purchase via download then the map will become locked forever to the GPS that you install it on and cannot be used in a different unit.

They don't seem to be offering this map on DVD. That means you cannot use it with Mapsource. Neither the storage card or download work with Mapsource, only on the GPS itself.

The routable version of Mapwel has just been released. Have not tried it myself yet. See: http://www.mapwel.eu/routing/routing.html

The Mapwel author has finally posted the workflow needed to do this. I have not tried it yet myself (Mapset toolkit is sort of a mystery to me  ). But it looks like we now have a fairly straightforward way to get Mapwel maps into Mapsource.

Upon request of several users I have checked compatibility of Mapwel IMG files
and Mapset toolkit.
To make map in IMG format exported from Mapwel compatible with Mapset Toolkit,
you have to do the following:

- Use main menu >File >Properties > Map ID tab to set user defined ID to map.
Check 'User Defined' option and insert some 8 digits map ID number. This number
must be unique among all maps in GPS. Check the 'Use as a file name' option.

- On the same tab check the 'User Defined' map set data option. Select some Map
Family ID and Product ID.

- Uncheck 'User Defined Styles' in the map parameters tab in the same window to
avoid merging of user styles file to the main map file. If you want to use user
defined styles with your map, export styles into TYP.txt file with use of main
menu > Objects > User Defined Styles > File.

- Make sure that map has 'Background Area' object which defines the shape of the
map. If there is no such object, draw it manually. It can have irregular shape
or it can be just rectangle.

- Export map into IMG file format.

- Load IMG file to Mapset Toolkit. Load TYP.txt file into respective box.
Previous steps were made to ensure compatibility with Mapset Toolkit, which
should be achieved at this point.

When you send the route to the GPS, look at the dialog box in Transfer > Send To Device. Un-check everything but routes. That will insure that nothing is changed with your GPS'es map and waypoints. Only the route itself will be sent.

Sorry, never tried that myself.

Sure, you should not have any problem with this. The Nuvi calls them "Favorites" though. Press Menu > Where To > Favorites on the Nuvi and you should see the full list. You would send them in Mapsource by just checking the waypoint box in the Send dialog.

You can also have the Nuvi import them directly from a .gpx file if you prefer. Put your waypoints into a .gpx file using mapsource or another program. Name the file temp.gpx, connect the Nuvi to your computer and open it like a disk. The file needs to be placed in \Garmin\GPX\temp.gpx on the Nuvi. When the Nuvi starts up it will read this file and add the contents to your existing favorites.

Just to be clear though - the version of mapsource which comes with the 60csx is just the program used to send and receive data from the GPS. It does not include any maps to load onto the 60csx.

When you purchase mapwel you must provide your GPS unit ID number. After that, the GPS becomes sort of a "dongle" that is used to authorize your copy. The basic version will only allow files to be uploaded to that single GPS and no others. I think the author is saying that if you load a map to an unauthorized GPS, it will hang and you will have to remove the map (which could be done either via USB disk mode or sending another map with Mapsource).

Just guessing though. I have the advanced version of Mapwel which will work with any GPS. But even so, I need to connect the same GPS I registered with the program when exporting a map file because, as I said above, it behaves like a "dongle".

If you have not yet purchased Mapwel then there isn't a lot of point in sending the map to the GPS. The trial version strips out a lot of details at random, making the map pretty useless.