Kritou said:
On a slightly related subject, I have seen mention that CS v7 is probably the end of the line with City Navigator NT v8 taking over on the Quest 2...
This is a tough question to answer, because I have to skirt carefully around non-disclosure agreements that limit what I can say in public. I will try to give the best answer I can, you might have to read between the lines a bit to figure things out. I'll give you information in point form, that is probably the easiest way.
1. Keep in mind that Garmin themselves don't really want to have two similar but different map products out there (CN and CS). If it were up to Garmin, there would be only one map product, and it would work in everything.
2. From point 1 above you can probably conclude that the reason that two different (but apparently very similar to the end user) map products exist must have something to do with the contractual and licencing arrangements between Garmin and the owners of the copyright to the cartography. As I have mentioned many times before, Garmin is a hardware company, not a map company. They don't make a single map themselves, never have, never will. They buy cartography from other companies and simply package it in a format that Garmin GPSRs can read.
3. The 'NT' version of cartography that has recently come out is called 'NT' because it supports traffic information broadcasts (which, oddly enough, don't use lat/long to describe locations, but use a proprietary grid). NT cartography supports this TMC grid, nothing more. So this whole NT thing doesn't signify anything at all other than TMC support.
4. In past years, the cost of the memory that was used to store cartography inside the GPSR was fairly high - we all remember paying $100 or more for a 128 meg chip that fit in a SP III. Heck, I can remember paying $100 for a 32 meg memory chip for a SP III ! Today, that kind of memory is so inexpensive that Garmin is installing 2 gigs of solid-state memory in most new GPSRs - that is capable of holding an entire continent of maps. This means there is no longer a need to supply CitySelect simply because map segment sizes on CS are a bit smaller than map segment sizes on CN.
5. For the end user who drives an automobile or a motorcycle, the only apparent difference between CS and CN is the text depiction of what is written on overhead motorway signs. For heavy duty industrial use (e.g. delivery companies, large trucks, fleet management) there may be other differences that might be significant to those kind of users. However, advances in technology might make it possible to cater to these two different user groups (individuals vs. businesses) with the same packaged cartography product.
6. I strongly suspect that if there is no longer a reason (provided by the cartography providers) to ask Garmin to publish two different cartographic products (CN and CS), and memory capacity is no longer a concern, Garmin will do the obvious and consolodate some map products in the future. OR... they might start distributing map products that are specific to a certain model of GPSR, if all the user needs to do is update the whole darn GPSR once every 12 to 18 months. Either of those actions would simplify things for both Garmin (from a logistics point of view) and for the end users (less confusion).
Personally, I have heard nothing at all about CS being discontinued. But, as explained above, the technical justifications for having the two different products seem to be fading away, so, as soon as the licencing issues can be sorted out to the satisfaction of the map producers, I personally can't see any reason at all to continue on with both a CS and CN product.
Again, this is all my own personal opinion and forecast - don't take it as a statement of fact or an insinuation of what Garmin plans to do.
Michael
