In car navigation

I think that the Tom Tom may be like a lot of the new type GPS units that are designed for mass market plug and play city navigation.
Although Tom Tom is using City Vav 7, a Sensis mapping product that does have extremely good detail and does show most bush roads, it does not have a facility that will allow you to download to your PC and vice versa.
I think only map updates can be loaded.

To further explain, if you want to create waypoints or routes on your PC and load them to the GPS or dowload recorded tracks and waypoints from the GPS to the PC for record keeping I do not think that you can do it.

Garmin have a few models that will let you do this.
Quest, Streetpilot come to mind but best check for yourself.

Regards
Bob

We to are researching GPS's so far we have found Garmin 660 most recomended but if I can add a few more questions?
We feel it will suit us better to work with a lap top and GPS talking to each other.
Plan a route in detail with a 1:100,000 (or 1:250,000) scale lap top topo map (obviously small outback tracks) which the road can only be seen begining to end with the larger size lap top, then transfer the marked turning points infomation thru to GPS.
Then put away lap top and work by voice comands thru GPS,
Question?
1/ Is the Garmin 660 able to do this?
2/ What extra software do we need to buy to enable them to talk to each other?
3/ Who else does this? Does it work simply?
4/ Where to find best package of disk topo maps,only Australia (must be 1:100,000)
Ian and Sheryl

Ok, did allot of research with this. We found that ,depending on your vehicle, (ours is a Landrover Discovery3 ) we have 2 glove boxes a small and large, the small one at the top folds down which is perfect for a laptop to sit on. It has a bungee cord to ensure that it stays there! I would think you could do the same with some other vehicles as well. If you want to go this way, I would recommend you purchase a 600w inverter to give the notebook "clean" power. Then we ran a Garmin GPS18 (which is basically just a GPS receiver) into the USB port on the notebook. Next we have a GME Cdma / Digital long range aerial on both the BT and the Disco so we can swap the notebook from one to the other. (Thanks to Noosa fox for the recommendation of attaching it to the Wine guard, unbelievable range! And something else I don’t have to worry about putting down) Hook up a Telstra “Next G” USB modem with this. Also we use a Magellan XL as a backup and portable device it has the Magellan Topo charts for the whole of Australia on a SD flash card (Magellan is the only manufacturer that I know of, that has Gps topographical charts available) it also has the largest color screen of any hand held GPS (make sure you buy the Australian version as the Ebay XL is a US model and has no AU warranty). I would use the XL for the Gps receiver for my notebook instead of the USB18 but I have windows vista and its not supported with USB drivers for realtime tracking as yet (although file transfer works fine!), being tested I’m told. You can also upload your topo charts from the XL to your notebook to use them on the bigger screen if your eyesight is crap like mine. Right... now the advantage with this system is:

1. You can navigate using Google Earth with a real time map which means you can see you car moving on the map (camped at an old 1890's gold mine in the Pilbara that no one had been to for years judging by the old sardine tins and antique bottles laying around there were the remains of “houses made from the local stones” had to remake the track in some sections. We only found it using Google Earth as it was not marked on any of the other maps)
2. You can fully utilise "Ozi Explorer" with a moving map if you are out of bigpond range. Or with GE if you know exactly the area you will hanging out in you can download all the satellite data for that area you will be in before you loose Next G.
3. You can download your waypoints from GE, to your GPS or to Oziex and save them there.
4. My Wife finds this system great because she is able to navigate much easier than on a paper map as the land marks are very clear!

5. One other bonus which is not as difficult as it once was is a VOIP phone. It looks exactly like a cordless phone yet you can communicate via broadband with your Next G modem, charges are around 8c untimed anywhere in the country and to most overseas places.( www.pennytel.com I found the best.)Very clear digital connection although sometimes you may get a bit of a pause or echo, who cares! Bloody cheap!!

There you go! clear as the dust behind my BT! Email me at ccd@bigpond.com if you would like something further explained.

Kenso

Jay,
Its very cool alright, just remember to load your track while you have broadband before you go, as you wouldnt have web at to many places out there!, just zoom in to say..1.3 km and download each section of the track, will take awhile but you will appreciate it on the road.

Take care
Kenso