PanEuropean
Registered user
John:
Interesting thought - buying more storage cards for the SP III. If the price of the cards drops on the resale market (e.g. eBay), then that could be a good solution for those who need just a bit more capacity than one 128 meg chip can provide.
I did some touring early last year with two 128 meg chips for the SP III, it saved me having to bring a laptop along.
But, on the other hand, if map data continues to grow in size - as we have just seen with the release of CN Europe version 6 - then the functionality of the SP III will be compromised as time progresses, even if you have a few chips.
It's kind of like what happened with computer software about 10 years ago - Microsoft used to keep the total size of the 'Office' applications really small prior to about 1992, because the average hard disk size in widespread use was about 80 megs or so. But once hard disk sizes took an exponential jump in size around 1994, the applications made a similar jump in size, going from perhaps 3 megs for a full install to about 600 megs today.
My guess is the same rapid growth in size will take place with map data, as NavTech continues to drive roads and add attribute data. Two years ago, they had probably driven only 5% of the roads on the map database, but these 5% accounted for (my guess here) about 30% of the CD size. If they get, say, 25% of the roads driven by the end of this year, then we could be looking at a 500% size increase in the map segment data.
Although this would be very good news for users so far as quality of routing goes, it will be bad news for users who have limited capacity for map segment storage. It makes me wonder if we will eventually see a sharp market segmentation in cartograpy products - a high end product (a la Microsoft Office) for those who have unlimited storage capacity, and a more compact product (a la Star Office) for those who have limited storage capacity. This ight be happening already with the CN/CS products vs. the MG products.
PanEuropean
Interesting thought - buying more storage cards for the SP III. If the price of the cards drops on the resale market (e.g. eBay), then that could be a good solution for those who need just a bit more capacity than one 128 meg chip can provide.
I did some touring early last year with two 128 meg chips for the SP III, it saved me having to bring a laptop along.
But, on the other hand, if map data continues to grow in size - as we have just seen with the release of CN Europe version 6 - then the functionality of the SP III will be compromised as time progresses, even if you have a few chips.
It's kind of like what happened with computer software about 10 years ago - Microsoft used to keep the total size of the 'Office' applications really small prior to about 1992, because the average hard disk size in widespread use was about 80 megs or so. But once hard disk sizes took an exponential jump in size around 1994, the applications made a similar jump in size, going from perhaps 3 megs for a full install to about 600 megs today.
My guess is the same rapid growth in size will take place with map data, as NavTech continues to drive roads and add attribute data. Two years ago, they had probably driven only 5% of the roads on the map database, but these 5% accounted for (my guess here) about 30% of the CD size. If they get, say, 25% of the roads driven by the end of this year, then we could be looking at a 500% size increase in the map segment data.
Although this would be very good news for users so far as quality of routing goes, it will be bad news for users who have limited capacity for map segment storage. It makes me wonder if we will eventually see a sharp market segmentation in cartograpy products - a high end product (a la Microsoft Office) for those who have unlimited storage capacity, and a more compact product (a la Star Office) for those who have limited storage capacity. This ight be happening already with the CN/CS products vs. the MG products.
PanEuropean
