Available space remaining on a Nuvi 1300

[MichaelJ07]

Son in law is wondering if there is enough space on his new Nuvi 1300 for both City Navigator 2011.1 and City Navigator 2011.2 AND Topo 100k......PLUS your wonderfully made topo maps.

How does he see if there is enough space?  Will one CN overwrite the other?  He is thinking of opening up Map Source to CN 2011.2, selecting map sets of what's available, then sending to his Nuvi.  Same procedure for the other maps listed.

Thanks muchly (from son in law......and me.)

Mike

[Boyd]

I had a Nuvi 1350 for awhile, and was surprised at how little free space was left on the internal drive. IIRC, there was only about 100MB extra space as supplied. You can delete unused voices and files to open up, perhaps, a total of about 250MB.

Why would you want to have 2011.1 AND 2011.2 on the GPS? Normally the new version replaces the old version. City Navigator North America is about 1.3 GB, so there's no way both will fit in internal memory.

What format of US Topo will you use? If you buy the DVD, it has too many segments to install the entire US. Your nuvi can only access a total of 4,000 map segments (the individual tiles that make up the map). The DVD version of US Topo contains about 6,600 segments, so it won't be possible to load it all (regardless of of much free space you have).

The only way to load all of US Topo 100k is to buy the version on a pre-loaded Garmin data card. It fits the whole US into about 450 segments that are much larger than the ones on the DVD. You cannot add more maps to a data card like this.

So one scenario would be to put CN 2011.2 in internal memory and have ~250MB free for additional maps in internal memory (if you delete unused voices, etc). Then you could have a US Topo card in the SD slot.

The other approach would be to get a 4GB data card and install a portion of the DVD version of US Topo there. You would still have enough free space on the card to install CN 2011.1 (although I don't know why you would want to), plus a number of other maps.

Only one other thought. The 1300 series is a poor choice for topo maps. It mangles their display pretty badly. Contour lines are huge and fat - bigger than the roads. It doesn't display wetland areas properly. And very few labels will appear on the screen, for things such as Cities, lakes, mountain summits, etc.

I don't know why Garmin messed this up so bad on the 1200/1300/1400. The 205 series does fine with topo maps. And the new 3700 series does a very nice job.

[MichaelJ07]

Great advice, again, Boyd.  I will pass it all on.

I appreciate your time and for sharing your knowledge.  I think personally, they should ditch the 1300 and get something else.  Stick it on ebay or something.  And I will never understand why they didn't do any type of internet search before they bought this unit.  I've told them about you folks from day one.

Anyhoo, rant over.  Thank you again for your time and efforts.

Mike