Garmin 450t NEWBIE

[hibby11]

Hi All,

I've spent the last couple days familiarizing myself with the unit and feel like I have a pretty good feel for the basic uses....

After looking around on the internet for awhile I was excited to try and use Mapsource for this GPS.  I was also a little surprised to find that Mapsource didn't come with the unit.  Figuring it was a free download I can't seem to find it anywhere, is there something i'm missing?

I looked under the tutorials and saw the link for downloading mapsource, but that will only seem to take me to the update...when I download that it recognizes that I don't currently have the software and it then kicks me off...

It came preloaded with the 100k basemap and I also purchased the NA SD card for driving purposes....please tell me I don't need to spend another 100 bucks to be able to download the software?

Sorry for the long post but thanks in advance for any and all help,

Travis

[maps4gps]

Item 1 of the tutorial says: Download and install Garmin Training Center
You need to do that first - the training center has MapSource in it.

Item 2 then bring MapSource up to the current edition - it must already be on the computer to update it.

[hibby11]

Hard to believe I actually had to follow the steps in order....wow....hopefully thats the dumbest question I ask on the forum...

Thanks for your help!

[Boyd]

After looking around on the internet for awhile I was excited to try and use Mapsource for this GPS.  I was also a little surprised to find that Mapsource didn't come with the unit.

That's because Garmin is trying to push us all away from Mapsource on handheld units. They are pushing BaseCamp now, their new software which was probably included with your Oregon. A new version should be coming out any day now, if they keep their promise to introduce the "BirdsEye" download service for aerial imagery in March. You will access these downloads using BaseCamp so I am guessing they want to push people towards the program in the hope that they will sign up for BirdsEye.

I have played around with Basecamp, and the 3d views of Garmin's own 100k topo are fun. But aside from that, I'm just not crazy about it and it seems a bit slow. Hopefully it will improve, and the BirdsEye imagery is tempting for $30/year. I won't be the first kid on the block to subscribe however. 

[hibby11]

It's absolutely crazy the amount of control and options you have with some of this software.....

I've spent the last 48 hours or so reading as much as I can around this site (and the oregon wiki) and i'm really quite surprised garmin doesn't have a better manual for their products. 

Anyway....I do after looking into things have a few more questions...

My 450t obviously came pre-loaded with the 100k topo basemap and I also purchased the NA road SD card allowing me to use this for driving as well.  After looking through several tutorials I was going to try and upload a Yosemite Topo/Trail NP map onto my unit.  My plan was to use this detailed map of Yosemite to create a track for the backpacking trip I will be taking for my honeymoon in 2 months.  Once I selected the area of the map I want to load and I create my track I think its time to upload......the reason I haven't yet is....i've heard a lot of people warn to be careful when uploading to your unit to make sure you're not overwriting any information.....

So the short of the long here is once I select the map that i'm interested in and sketch the track over the map, once I hit send to device it gives me the choice of 450t which seems like the right choice.  I'm just concerned that i'll overwrite something I don't want to and mess up my navigation SD card or the 100k basemap..


This probably seems like a really simple question, I just don't want to mess anything up on my first upload....

Thank you in advance for the help, this site has a lot of great information

Travis

[Boyd]

Also a good idea to back everything up now, in its original state, in case you do have a problem later. The system software is contained in internal memory that you can't access, and it can always be restored with webupdater. But if you somehow delete or damage the map file, then you have a problem. Just copy everything from the GPS to a folder on your computer. It will take awhile and use up about 3GB of disk space.

Some people feel it's also a good idea to backup their Garmin data cards. The map is copy protected, and it won't work if you copy it to a different card. However, if you had a problem with the original card, you could re-format it and copy your backup to that same card. That *might* give you just a little bit of insurance against future problems.