Garmin Streetpilot III US origin

[Invicta Moto]

Have the chance of an S3 from an american cousin.. secondhand mind you.

Will use it for navigating NY State when over there, but can I ditch the US basemaps when I bring it home and load the Europe maps or am I stuck with it being a US import and loading Europe to the memory stick?

Have read the 180 threads in GPS so far and not found the one I think might answer my question!

 

[roadrider]

.Will use it for navigating NY State when over there, but can I ditch the US basemaps when I bring it home and load the Europe maps or am I stuck with it being a US import and loading Europe to the memory stick?

The base map is burned into the inbuilt rom chip and cannot be changed, by loading the euro detailed mapping onto the memory card is how you get the SP3 to work. As long as you have the memory card loaded with the detailed mapping you want at the time your using it, you shouldn't have a problem.
John

 

[Greg Masters]

The problem that you will encounter is the lack of capacity to load the detailed UK/European maps.

The SPIII can only take a 128Mb card - that card is unique to Garmin and pretty expensive. Using City Navigator v6, you won't even get the whole of the UK loaded.

If you want to do a trip from, say, London to Berlin and return via Paris, you wouldn't stand a change. However, if you had the European base map, you could load Calais (to navigate you in/out the port area), plus Berlin and Paris street by street. The bits in between you would navigate using the basemap (which still gives auto-routing capability).

Also bear in mind that the SPIII is a lot cheaper in the States, but the European City Navigator mapping data is maga-expensive!

Greg

 

[PanEuropean]

Paul:

Perhaps this explanation will help you understand what's involved:

The GPSR uses two different types of maps. One, the 'basemap', is permanantly burned into the memory of the GPSR - not the memory stick, but inside the unit itself. There are North American basemap units ("Americas") and European basemap units ("Atlantic"). The basemap serves a variety of functions, these have been discussed in detail elsewhere.

The other form of map that the GPSR uses is the map loaded into the memory stick. These are referred to as "detail maps". When your cousin bought his GPSR (in the USA), it came with a CD containing detail maps for the USA. He then loaded sections of maps from this CD to his GPSR's memory stick.

If you want to use the Americas GPSR in Europe, you will need to buy a CD that contains detail maps for Europe. This will be quite an expensive purchase - about USD $550 or so. Your GPSR will then function in Europe, although you will not have the use of the basemap.

Bottom line - if you are thinking of buying a used unit, it is probably cheaper for you to look for a used European unit, which will have the European basemap, and come complete with a CD containing European detail maps.

Greg is correct when he points out that you cannot load large areas of Europe onto the 128 meg chip that comes with the SP III GPSR. If you plan to mostly ride in one country, perhaps this might not be a problem for you. If you don't mind taking a laptop along with you to reload the GPSR as you move from country to country, this will solve the problem also. But, if you want to be able to load large areas of Europe onto one chip, then ride off into the sunset, the only product that will let you do that is the new SP 2610 or SP 2650, and those are quite expensive.

 

[Howard Millichap]

If you want to do a trip from, say, London to Berlin and return via Paris, you wouldn't stand a change. However, if you had the European base map, you could load Calais (to navigate you in/out the port area), plus Berlin and Paris street by street. The bits in between you would navigate using the basemap (which still gives auto-routing capability).

One way around the "bits in between" problem would be to load "World Map" for those bits. This would give you motorways and main roads but would NOT allow auto routing. Who needs auto routing on motorways and main roads anyway?

Personally, I take my (very small and light) Dell Latitude LS. This allows me to sit in the pub in the evening and plan and load new routes and update the mapping on the data cards as I travel.

 

[Invicta Moto]

Thanks all, I'll pass on the ownership of the SP3... It was a frivolous exenditure in any case, but too costly to use here.

Thanks again.

 

[Podger]

Paul:
the only product that will let you do that is the new SP 2610 or SP 2650, and those are quite expensive.

Or you buy an extra 128 chip for £70'ish in the USA and use that in the unit to load a few more details

 

[roadrider]

no shouting please, much to loud
Thanks

 

[Podger]

No quite correct

The SPIII can only take a 128Mb card - that card is unique to Garmin and pretty expensive. Using City Navigator v6, you won't even get the whole of the UK loaded.

This is incorrect , and see :http://www.adventure-motorcycling.c...ts/?category=57

 

[Greg Masters]

Re: No quite correct

This is incorrect , and see :http://www.adventure-motorcycling.c...ts/?category=57

If you ask Garmin, you'll get the same answer that I gave.

But as I did say elsewhere on this BB, a non-Garmin 256Mb card is available from the aftermarket.

Greg

 

[PanEuropean]

Folks, I have no opinion either way on the aftermarket 256 meg chip, but I do want to bring one thing to your attention if you are considering buying a 256 meg or larger chip:

The system software that Garmin provides to operate the GPSR is only tested with either the chips that Garmin provides (in the case of all the GPSR's that use the SP III form-factor chip), or with storage media that Garmin specifies as suitable for the device (in the case of the SP 26xx device).

So, if you use out of spec or non-supported media - such as a 256 meg chip in a SP III, or an out of spec mini hard-drive in a SP 26xx (out of spec meaning, it fits in the slot, but is not on the list of Garmin compatible media), then you are kind of 'on your own' if future releases of either the cartographic software or the system software don't work with the out of spec media.

By example, when the larger sizes of Garmin chips started to appear in 2001 (the 64 and 128 meg sizes), quite a few people bought them to use in older Garmin GPSR's, such as the original StreetPilot, which only support a chip size up to 32 megs. They were then quite disappointed to find that although they could load 128 megs on the chip, either the GPSR would not address more than 32 megs, or if it addressed more than 32 megs, it could not cope with more than a certain number of map segments on the chip (a number that was large enough for 32 meg chips, but too small for 128 meg chips).

Considering all this, I think it would probably be a safer course of action to purchase a second 128 meg chip, rather than get a 256 meg chip and sell your original 128 meg one. At least that way, you can be sure that you won't have compatibility problems down the road.

Having said that, though - it is pretty clear that the "writing is on the wall" for GPSR's that have limited storage capacity, such as the GPS V at 21 megs, or the SP III at 128 megs per chip. Everyone saw what happened to the map sizes (and the map segment sizes) with the version 6 release of CN and CS Europe - they took a big jump. No doubt a similar big jump - following a logarithmic growth pattern - will take place with the version 7 releases in 2005. Remember that the vast majority of automobile navigation systems run directly off the CD, not from storage media that CD data has been transferred to.

This whole 'data growth' process is no different than what happened with computer application software sizes throughout the 80's and 90's - data will expand to fill the storage capacity available for it. I still have a single-side, low density 480 kb floppy disk that not only contains the complete Microsoft Word 1.05 application, but also has space reserved on it to store the documents you were expected to create. Now, the same program - presently at version 10 - comes on two CD's, and the total size of all the files associated with this application is well over a gigabyte.

Buying a new SP III today (and planning to use it for 2 or 3 years) would only be a wise choice for a person who does not plan to travel very far (e.g. more than a 100 mile radius) from their home base, and does not want or need any navigation capabilities beyond what the SP III currently provides. If you want to run with the big dogs and stay current with both cartographic software and operating system software capabilities (road preferences, custom avoids, proximity warnings, etc.) for the next 2 or 3 years, then you really should buy the most 'current' product - in this case, the SP 26xx. Buying a new SP III to keep capital costs low, then planning to buy a 256 meg chip to increase performance is a bit like a teenager buying a BMW 3 series with a 1.6 litre engine, then planning to put a 4 barrel carb and fancy exhaust on it to boost performance. He's never going to be able to keep up with the 540's, much as he may dream of doing so.

The picture is not as bleak as it sounds, though... the street price of a SP 2610, today, is lower than the street price of a SP III when it was first introduced in 2001. Again, it's same path as computers have taken.

PanEuropean

 

[Podger]

Street Pilot 111

All the above accepted (in principal but..), an SP111 at £500 'ish at present , plus a second Garmin 128 Mb chip from the USA has got to be the economic way forward at the moment and this will allow one to still travel more than your 100 miles ............I do have a problem with your assumption , I (and others) travel in 350 mile daily legs , using a SP111 , and that's fully routed

 

[PanEuropean]

Podger:

You are totally correct when you say "...an SP111 at £500 'ish at present...has got to be the economic way forward..." I have no argument with that (couldn't have, considering I used a SP III and a single 128 meg chip for over two years of touring Ireland to Romania and Atlantic to Pacific in North America).


What I was trying to point out is that although this combination will work just fine now, and, for that matter, will still work fine in 10 years if you don't drop it, you will not have the ability to keep up with new cartography software and new system software enhancements down the road. As long as this is understood and accepted, no problems. If it is not fully understood and accepted, then the purchaser of a SP III today will be a bit like the person who bought the 486 computer at a great price just a few months before Microsoft released Windows 2000 - only to find out that the 486 processor would not support the new OS and the Media Player, etc. However, if the 486 purchaser had analyzed their needs and anticipated future developments, and then decided that all they really needed was a machine that could run Win98, a browser, and a word processor, and they knew they would not be concerned about not being able to keep up with the latest "tricks" - well, in that case, they got a great deal.

When I say "new system software enhancements", what I mean is, for example, what we are seeing in 2.95 public beta - the ability to fine tune road preferences for motorcycle touring. This can't be incorporated into the SP III system software because the processor in the SP III does not have the horsepower to handle it.

PanEuropean