City Navigator detail?

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Thanks Monty,
I did actually download the OSM France mapping and installed it into basecamp to have a play with (not actually installed it onto my Zumo yet).

I'm just a bit nervous about depending on it 'untried' for foreign travel - wouldn't want to find out there are problems while away from home and computers / internet etc. These might be unfounded fears and It wouldn't be the end of the world - I've got maps and can read signs but I have got used to the (mostly) stress free experience that is satnav guided travel, especially in areas I've never visited.
I quite understand the doubts, but almost all feedback seems positive and a lot of folk think they are better than the Garmin ones.

Have a great trip, whichever way you go.

Matt
 
The Zumo 550 was obsolete before lifetime mapping became common so it's unlikely that there's anything waiting for it, but download and install Garmin Express to find out. Express will also bring the Zumo's firmware up to the latest version, which will allow it to handle maps bigger than 2 gigabytes, assuming it's branded Garmin rather than BMW. OpenStreetMap is free and very good, although I've seen a few oddities with it. Having said that, agenuine, straight-from-Garmin CN2016.1 raised my eyebrows in France a few times this summer. If you go for OSM then I'd suggest you need JaVaWa's GMTK from http://www.javawa.nl/anderstalig.html. Things have changed there since I last looked (a Zumo with lifetime maps has made the 2610 redundant) but it should give you everything you need.

If you look at the dodgy "free" Garmin stuff you have two choices. One is to bootleg an entire mapset, including whatever spyware, viruses and the like are included, the other is to find a tool that lets you use someone else's legitimate map subscription. Whichever you try, watch out for the map version you win. I found, in an idle moment, a tool to remove something from Garmin maps to let them work on any unit. What I found with a friend's Zumo 550 and an old Nuvi 660 was that CN2015.2 worked fine but later versions didn't. They were still routable but street names didn't display for some reason unknown to me.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone.

I have a good result (of sorts):)

After speaking to nice man at Garmin and explaining the situation (bought my Zumo second hand attached to the bike and even though it originally included full EU mapping, my 550 only has the UK installed), he offered me a one time download of the mapping that would have originally been included with the device - NT2009.

I said 'yes please' and I've downloaded this and installed it to an SD card. Obviously at some point the original owner updated to NT2011 and this is lost to me (apart from the NT2011 UK map which is in the devices' internal memory) but at least I now have full Euro mapping, albeit only 2009.

This will be enough for my September trip as most of the roads we'll be using have been around for decades if not centuries (Route Napoleon and RDGA). If I manage to get hold of a 'cheap' :augie update to a later version, I'll update but this should do me for now.

All that said, I've had a chance to play with the OSM stuff on Basecamp and it looks good so I may take this too. My only difficulty is working out how to install multiple maps onto an SD card - it seems that the Zumo doesn't like you renaming them and Mapinstall overwrites the existing map file. It'll be a pain to be swopping SD cards at every border crossing...

Thanks again for all the advice.
 
After speaking to nice man at Garmin and explaining the situation (bought my Zumo second hand attached to the bike and even though it originally included full EU mapping, my 550 only has the UK installed), he offered me a one time download of the mapping that would have originally been included with the device - NT2009.

I said 'yes please' and I've downloaded this and installed it to an SD card. Obviously at some point the original owner updated to NT2011 and this is lost to me (apart from the NT2011 UK map which is in the devices' internal memory) but at least I now have full Euro mapping, albeit only 2009.

I thought they'd say 'yes' to a polite request for help. You now have a perfectly adequate detailed map for your holiday, for free.

Lots of bods complain about Garmin and it being a rip-off (the perenial bikers' moan about anything and everything) but their back-up support is good.
 
Looks like it's all done and dusted.

Tips for anyone in the future:

(1) If the detail is missing from your maps, check first that the detailed mapping is installed on the device and / or on your computer

(2) If it is, check the slider scale on your computer and the zoom button on your device

(3) If it isn't, download the detailed mapping

(4) If you don't want to pay for the detailed mapping, then:

(a) Speak to Garmin about them granting you a (free) version of the detailed mapping, dated to coincide with the device's first release date or later

(b) Download a (possibly) pirated copy

(c) Download a free map set from Open Street Maps

(5) Remember that a part of the premium price charged for the device goes towards funding Garmin's very good after-sales service
 
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