Maps from Colorado 400t to Rino 650

[Jerny]

I am hoping somebody can give some insight. I am not too gps savvy, but I currently have a Coloado 400t with the topo maps built in. I was wondering if there is a way to buy the rino 650 since it is cheaper than the 650t, and transfer the maps over to it from the Colorado. It would be the topo for the whole US, or should I get the newer maps and not try and deal with it? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Boyd]

The map on your Colorado was licensed for use on that device. It would be against the policy of this forum to discuss ways to violate Garmin's licenses.

I had an Oregon 400t which had the same map but gave it to a friend long ago. That 100k topo map is certainly better than nothing, but it really leaves a lot to be desired. Errors of hundreds of feet were very common for roads. These maps were based on the Census Bureaus old TIGER files, and those really had a lot of inaccuracies, especially in my area.

Garmin's new version of the 100k topo uses the same source for road data as their City Navigator and 24k Topo products. I have not used these myself, but have read they are a big improvement over the old version.

[Indrid Cold]

You should try the 24k topos from this site fir you area, I bet you find them quite a bit better than that outdated 100k map from your Colorado

[Jerny]

Thanks for all the info. I am not wanting to violate any policies, so good to know on the garmin licensing. I will definitely look at the 24k maps as well. Really, the only reason I was wanting to keep the maps I already have, is that I travel quite a bit, and it is nice to not have to load maps since it includes the entire lower 48. Is there a map out there of the lower 48 as one map, other than the one from garmin?

[Boyd]

Not aware of any topo maps that cover the whole US aside from the Garmin 100k. There's OpenStreetMap but I have read it may be difficult to load the entire US.

There are some excellent maps here, but they do not always work seamlessly together and there will be problems where they overlap. There are also technical limits to Garmin's format such that you would probably exceed the maximum segment limit if you load too many separate maps.

Garmin's handhelds can only use a maximum of about 4000 segments. Maps are divided into smaller "tiles" called segments. There are no standards for the size of a segment, but unless someone is building a map specifically to cover the whole US, this is likely to be a problem if you load too many maps.