To use a North American 2610 over here...

mrTickle

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.... you need the European City Navigator CD for auto routing, and also the Worldmap CD. Without the Worldmap loaded, no European basemaps are displayed on the GPS from 5 miles zoom and above.

All you get is an outline of the country, with the names of the major cities -there are no roads displayed at all. However once the Worldmap is loaded, everything is back to normal and the roads are displayed properly at all zoom levels.

My GPS arrived with a 128MB memory card and that's big enough to download the European basemap from the Worldmap CD and also from Cornwall to Glasgow from the European City Navigator CD. I’ve ordered myself a 1GB memory card, which will let me load all of Europe into it, right to street level.

My North American 2610 came with a 110/240 volts mains adapter in the box, so there were no problems regarding power and everything else is exactly the same as the Atlantic unit.

The routing is brilliant -- it calculates a 500 mile route in about 25 seconds, and if I go off-route, it re-calculates a new route within 20 seconds. For shorter routes (say 5 miles), it creates them in about 4 seconds and off-routes are recalculated in about a second. The address lookup works fine even though it's a North American 2610. I find that the touchscreen is a lot easier to use than my old Streetpilots buttons -I can create a route & be navigating within 10 seconds.

Over £500 can be saved by buying a North American version of the 2610. I was lucky because I managed to source my copy of the European City Navigator and Worldmap software for no additional cost. If I had to purchase the software, it would have been a tougher decision for me getting a U.S 2610. For anyone owning a Streetpilot III, and who's not registered a second GPS on it, £ 500.00 is a considerable saving to be made. Worldmap doesn't require an unlock code so you can source that whatever way suits you best ;)

The only downside I've had in owning my 2610 so far, is that no handlebar mounts are available yet. They should be here around March, so hopefully it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
 
I'm off to the US and considering buying the 2610 over there, and as I've a UK SP3 with the Europe map I should be fat dumb and happy. And with the $ at such a good rate for us it'll be about £600 against £1000 for it in the UK. But, and its a big one anyone know why my cunning plan won't work?
 
Sounds like a good setup.

However, WorldMap will not work like a basemap. Altho it is visually identical in many countries, WorldMap has no routing information.
I guess if you have City Navigator loaded for all for areas (and you can with the much larger storage capacity) then this is not a problem.

Note that there have been problems reported with some brands of MicroDisk
 
John Armstrong said:
I'm off to the US and considering buying the 2610 over there, and as I've a UK SP3 with the Europe map I should be fat dumb and happy. And with the $ at such a good rate for us it'll be about £600 against £1000 for it in the UK. But, and its a big one anyone know why my cunning plan won't work?

Your U.S 2610 will work great in Europe -I got mine from here:-

http://www.brokenlegdave.com/Manufacture/Garmin/2610.htm

£ 410.00 @ todays exchange rate.

With the North American & European City Navigator C.D's, I'm covered for point to point navigation in both Europe & North America, which I wouldn't have got if I'd bought an Atlantic unit in the UK for a £1000.00 quid!! The total cost of my GPS including the extra 1Gb compact Flash card was £ 570.00.

As far as auto-routing is concerned, with 1Gb of memory installed, the only places I don't have auto-routing for are western Russia, Africa, and the Middle East. In my experience, when travelling in remote places, I head for town to town, and most of the time there's only one major road going between them, so auto-routing isn't needed anyway. Following the Worldmap roads is straightforward and how I used my previous Streetpilot.

I'll probably be using the auto-routing 99% of the time in the country/continent I live in anyway , so the non auto-routing countries won't be much of a problem. Get yourself a 2610 from the States and save nearly £ 600 quid :beerjug:
 
Sounds pretty good MrT!

Have you found a solution to bring the sound to your intercom / helmet? I understand there is no external sound connection on the 2610...

Cheers,
Michel
 

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2610's purchased in America have the City Navigator North America C.D only - no European City Navigator is included in the box. The mains adapter works at 110-240V 50-60Hz so the only things that you need, are the European City Navigator and Worldmap.

To get around this problem, I bought a U.K SPIII for £ 499 & registered it. This let me use the European City Navigator software supplied with it, on my 2610 (Garmin let you unlock a second GPS unit for no additional charge ). I then sold the SPIII and actually made a little profit from it. As a bonus, I'm entitled to the City Navigator V6 upgrade. SPIII's are currently fetching around £500-£550 on e-bay, so if you are going to do it, do it now -the new lower price of the SPIII will bring the secondhand prices down very soon.

I already had Worldmap, so that wasn't a problem for me ( although my 2610 works fine without Worldmap - it just doesn't display any roads on a zoom of 5 miles and above ). If you need further info on Worldmap, try searching a P2P file-sharing network such as E-mule. You will probably find some very usefull & handy downloads for your Garmin GPS.
 
Mr T

Did you buy yours mail order from brokenlegdave, and if so, how much duty & VAT did you pay on delivery. I bought an accessory for my digital camera a while back, after posts on dpreview had indicated that they had got away without paying any, and I ended up with a bill for £73! Mind you, I still saved several hundred pounds, so it was worth it. :D
I've just bought a Garmin V and have the City Select software, so I guess that will do for all of Europe, together with the World Map you mentioned.

Regards,

Charles
 
Just found this picture on ADVRider. It's in a report on the Berlin Motorrad show - the bike is a Touratech Supermoto 1150 GS, but it may be of interest because it shows (for the first time, I believe?) the Touratech mount for the 2610 / Navigator II....

Mike:)
 

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2610 Bike mount

I have just ordered a 2610 and was looking for mounts.

Touratech German site is showing two. One is lockable.


Gerry H.
 
crvfr said:
Mr T

Did you buy yours mail order from brokenlegdave, and if so, how much duty & VAT did you pay on delivery. I bought an accessory for my digital camera a while back, after posts on dpreview had indicated that they had got away without paying any, and I ended up with a bill for £73! Mind you, I still saved several hundred pounds, so it was worth it. :D
I've just bought a Garmin V and have the City Select software, so I guess that will do for all of Europe, together with the World Map you mentioned.

Regards,

Charles

Mine was delivered by BrokenLegDave to a friend of ours who lives in the U.S. It was meant to be picked up and brought back here by hand but this didn't happen as Garmin had stock shortages and were 1 /12 months behind delivery schedule. Because of this, my GPS was posted by regular U.S mail to the U.K. & got lost in the post for a month & a half. To my relief ( no insurance ) it finally arrived after 3 months of waiting last week. As my GPS was a gift, it had "Gift" written on the outside of the box, so my GPS was VAT exempt ( I don't know if Dave provides gift wrapping services from his shop, so you'd have to ask him on the phone).


Similar to your camera story -I ordered a $ 20 LED torch from the States last year & got a letter from my local P.O sorting office when it arrived, telling me that £ 1.50 VAT was due and also a fee of £ 4.50 to the Post Office because they were acting as my VAT agent!

Mike / Gerry:- cheers 4 that guys, I just checked the Touratech German page and yep, they're there Like a stupid boy I had only been looking at the English version
 
Differences

Anyone else noticed the similarity between the BMW Navigator 2 as advertised on world of BMW in the "news" and the 2610. The Nav 2 seems to have a side pod with an extra four buttons.:confused:
 

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Yes indeed, it is the same gps basically.

BMW added a special cradle with 4 extra buttons, and an audio connection. Looks good, but... costs quite a bit more of course.

Cheers,
Michel
 
At what point did the 2610 become waterproof ?
I thought they weren't - which let them down for m/c's

Phil
 
MiGSel said:
Yes indeed, it is the same gps basically.

BMW added a special cradle with 4 extra buttons, and an audio connection. Looks good, but... costs quite a bit more of course.

Cheers,
Michel

And what's the betting that the special cradle will fit the "cheap" 2610 and then you'll have an easier to use system without the likely high cost of the Navigator 2. Or in time Garmin will offer the extra buttons. And as BMW are fitting it onto bikes you'd expect it to be able to resist water at least.
 
motomartin said:
At what point did the 2610 become waterproof ?
I thought they weren't - which let them down for m/c's

Phil

I think that you're getting confused with the Navman iCN630.

The Garmin 2610 is IPX7 rated: an IPX7 designation means the GPS case can withstand accidental immersion in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes.

Greg
 
The 2610 is just as waterproof as the SPIII. So no problems there.

quote from the Garmin manual:
Case: Rugged; fully gasketed; IPX-7 waterproof (only with CF slot cover closed. Waterproof rating for StreetPilot unit only, does not include remote control)

As far as I have found out, the special bmw cradle is not sold separately, and it won't even fit a standard 2610... So a Touratech or other motorcycle mount will be necessary.

The one from TT is available, the Garmin motorcycle bracket is announced for January.
 
mrTickle said:
.... you need the European City Navigator CD for auto routing, and also the Worldmap CD. Without the Worldmap loaded, no European basemaps are displayed on the GPS from 5 miles zoom and above.

All you get is an outline of the country, with the names of the major cities -there are no roads displayed at all. However once the Worldmap is loaded, everything is back to normal and the roads are displayed properly at all zoom levels.
Mr. T, can you load the City Navigator maps and the Worldmap at the same time then?

I thought that if you load a map set, you erase the ones that were on the card. So it's either the detailed maps or the worldmap, no?

Or is there a way to load City Navigator maps and Worldmap at the same time, in one "load operation"?

Cheers,
Michel
 


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