garmin street pilot

How many versions of the Garmin Street pilot have been made to date and if more than one, are there any major differences??

I can only seem to find info on the StreetPilot III

many thanks

AndyT

Streetpilot

Andy - there are three main versions of the Streetpilot. The first two (Streetpilot and Streetpilot Colormap) are identical except for the screen. Both are waterproof, have built in basemap (BE CAREFUL - buy an Atlantic basemap model NOT a USA one), accept (very expensive) Garmin data cartidges and will NOT route you to your destination turn-by-turn. The mono Streetpilot is still available, the Colormap is officially discontinued, but there are a few new ones about and usually one or two available on eBay. Too expensive new, OK secondhand. Consensus seems to be that the 176 or 176C are better alternatives (much bigger screen).
Streetpilot III is totally different - offers all the features of previous versions PLUS turn-by-turn navigation. Seems to the dogs wotsits and the BMW Navigator is a Streetpilot III with a few minor changes.
With all these units, if buying secondhand, check out the basemap version and extras thrown in as they are expensive to buy new. In particular, large data cartridges (64 & 128 mb) are useful.
Most of the info you need is on the Garmin site - also worth looking at http://joe.mehaffey.com/ - excellent site.
Good luck!

I bought a StreetPilot III fairly recently and I deliberated for a long time over whether to buy the European version for just over £1k, or the US version for about £550.

So far as I can tell, the only differences are basemap and the Euro version being multi-lingual.

With the 128MB rewriteable datacard that comes with the Deluxe version, you can load in pretty much the whole of the UK down to streetlevel from the Euro City Navigator CD. For trips to Europe, you'd have to reload the data according to your destination. It would only be if you went off those tiles that you had loaded in that you'd miss having the Euro basemap.

Buying a US version, you wouldn't get the Euro City Navigator CDs (you'd get the North American version - which I am trying to borrow right now!), but there are enough folk about with the Euro version to load up your datacard as required.

Best

Greg Masters

Thanks for the info guys. I have an option for one and will check the base map as suggested. One more question. What if the basemap isn't the Atlantic one but is the USA one. Can it be changed at a later date??

regards

Andy

AndyT said:

What if the basemap isn't the Atlantic one but is the USA one. Can it be changed at a later date??

Click to expand...

No. The basemap is blown onto a ROM on the board and Garmin will not change the board for you even if you offer them money - I asked before buying mine.

However the units will work across the world as long as you have loaded maps for the region - once off the loaded maps the display wont show information but you will still get your position for use on paper maps etc.