TomTom's cunning plan to have access to all Europe on Rider Urban

[veetwokay]

I just bought a new Rider Urban Europe because it was advertised as having mapping for 45 European countries on it. When I registered I was told that newer map sets were available. Hooked up and loaded Western Europe but then discovered that it did not contain all the countries that I wanted. Contacted TomTom support to be told that when purchased, the Urban Rider contained an old map set that fitted onto the 2gb internal memory. The latest new European map sets are now too large to fit onto the Rider, so they have now zoned the map sets (see here)

http://uk.support.tomtom.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12185/locale/en_gb

They have a cunning plan to overcome the necessity of spending hours on the internet loading & re loading the different zones as detailed here:
‘After discussion we agreed that the best option for ensuring that you could make use of the different map zones while on the road is to have each zone backed up to a hard drive/removable disk.
To do this you would need to download each map zone individually to the device and then back it up to your computer through TomTom HOME.
To select a new map zone you need to go to HOME > Manage my Rider > select Maps > Change Map zone. Once the zone has been downloaded you can then back it up through HOME using Manage my Rider > Maps > Copy Items to Computer.
All map data will be backed to the following folder on your PC: My Documents > TomTom > HOME > From Device. This can be copied and transferred as needed’.

Although this uses TomTom Home it is not necessary to connect to the internet so it should be possible to hook up to a lap top on a tour and change the zone as you ride into a different zone.
Has anyone any experience of doing this and is it reliable? If not, I am considering returning the Rider and reverting to one of the Garmin iterations.

 

[Mistacat]

Not sure about the urban rider , I have always used the rider V2 Europe which looks identical.
The Rider V2 first came out with a 1GB card which was too small the new one has a 2gb card which is now too small.
I use 4gb cards in both of mine, The whole of Europe + loads of poi files and over 1gb of free space.
Also have the whole of USA and Canada on another card.
I always download to new cards as I like to keep the originals in case a card gets corrupted.
I understand that not all 4GB cards will work.

 

[dickins]

Not sure about the urban rider , I have always used the rider V2 Europe which looks identical.
The Rider V2 first came out with a 1GB card which was too small the new one has a 2gb card which is now too small.
I use 4gb cards in both of mine, The whole of Europe + loads of poi files and over 1gb of free space.
Also have the whole of USA and Canada on another card.
I always download to new cards as I like to keep the originals in case a card gets corrupted.
I understand that not all 4GB cards will work.

Another cop out by Tomtom.What on earth goes through the mind of the designer when he decides to put an inadequate internal hard drive on the unit without any possibility for further expansion.To then suggest lugging a laptop around with you to update the map zone simply beggars belief

The numbskulls resbonsible deserve to be stoned with their on bike chargers(which are'nt included with the urban rider)

 

[veetwokay]

Not sure about the urban rider , I have always used the rider V2 Europe which looks identical.
The Rider V2 first came out with a 1GB card which was too small the new one has a 2gb card which is now too small.
I use 4gb cards in both of mine, The whole of Europe + loads of poi files and over 1gb of free space.
Also have the whole of USA and Canada on another card.
I always download to new cards as I like to keep the originals in case a card gets corrupted.
I understand that not all 4GB cards will work.

Actually the Urban Rider has no expansion slot So the poor design issue just got a whole lot worse. That's progress! To be fair the overlap of countries in their cunning solution is huge so I really don't think I will have a problem. I've also found the Rider to be far more error free than the Zumos I've had. Best Garmin for me was the 2610 no question. Would I go back to a Garmin - No thank you!