upgrade to v9

[floyd]

I am currently running v6 on my Quest and would like to upgrade to v9 but garmin will not allow this as they are waiting for v10 . Is there any other way I can upgrade

 

[Daithi]

I am currently running v6 on my Quest and would like to upgrade to v9 but garmin will not allow this as they are waiting for v10 . Is there any other way I can upgrade

Getting the disk is easy, it's the unlock code for your unit that is the
problem. If they are saying no, then, no.

I think your only hope is to ring them a couple of times in the hope of
getting through to someone reasonable/gullable, tell them you need it
to get a kidney to a long lost relative in the middle of nowhere and ask
them really nicely to make this one tiny exception.

I'm sure all they do is type the unit ID into some algorithm and this
generates a new unlock code, probably only takes a minute.

If the above is no use to you, at least it's a bump.

 

[floyd]

Tried Garmin again today for V9. They gave me a phone number but they wanted £120 for it. The guy at Garmin said V10 will be out 1st March and it would be cheaper to wait and upgrade through there website.

 

[Bumpkin]

If you really need more up to date mapping for a trip then you could go with Metroguide Europe v9 combined with MetroWizzz until the new version of City Nav. comes out. Doing a search here for Metroguide should turn up plenty of information. It has advantages and disadvantages over City Nav, as I say, do a search...

 

[floyd]

Thanks for that Bumpkin I'll have a look

 

[Bumpkin]

As a matter of interest I purchased MetroGold (the paid for version of MetroWizzz) this morning for the grand sum of £3.17. Does exactly 'what it says on the tin', Metroguide now works the same as City Navigator for selecting and uploading mapping to the device. MetroWizzz requires you to go off and create the index file... a lot of twaddling around to get the same end result.

 

[Invicta Moto]

As a matter of interest I purchased MetroGold (the paid for version of MetroWizzz) this morning for the grand sum of £3.17. Does exactly 'what it says on the tin', Metroguide now works the same as City Navigator for selecting and uploading mapping to the device. MetroWizzz requires you to go off and create the index file... a lot of twaddling around to get the same end result.

Tell me more about this product. I can read their website and they will say it is the dogs bollox.. but in reality? Use the same as Mapsource?

 

[cookie]

Tell me more about this product. I can read their website and they will say it is the dogs bollox.. but in reality? Use the same as Mapsource?

it is indistinguishable from City Navigator in most ways, but as i posted in another thread:

"metroguide is deficient in that it contains less "attributes" than City Navigator or Select. it ignores many roundabouts, and when routing just says "take left to A38" or whatever. no use if you don't know which road the A38 is. i don't want to be looking for signs."

CN tells you to take 3rd exit or whatever, which is much more useful. i suspect Metroguide will be less helpful when it comes to motorway multi lane junctions too, but i'm not sure about that. i never tried it on any motorways.

does it work? yes

is it as good? not quite, but it is more or less freely available.

 

[Bumpkin]

Tell me more about this product. I can read their website and they will say it is the dogs bollox.. but in reality? Use the same as Mapsource?

As Cookie says you need to be careful buying on eBay, all current copies of Metroguide on there at this moment are pirated copies. Some time back there were some genuine ones available though costing upwards from £50 or so.

MetroWizzz and MetroGold don't contain any mapping, all they do is enable the building of the index required to make the mapping routeable on your GPS. This is inhibited for Metroguide products. Using the free MetroWizzz is a little fiddly using an external utility. MetroGold enables this do be done, behind the scenes, in Mapsource as you would when using City Navigator mapping.

My reason for using Metroguide is particular to the Quest which has limited memory space for uploaded mapping and no slot to expand the fixed memory. The Quest was designed in the era of City Select (predecessor to City Navigator), this had small tile sizes (mapping is loaded in tiles, each country of a reasonable size has many of these). When plotting a route across Europe you select to load tiles based around your route (Mapsource can do this for you on command). This route corridor, made up of map tiles, obviously takes memory space. Three or four years ago enter the new Garmin mapping 'City Navigator', exit stage left City Select. City Navigator, designed for the more recent units with large, cheap removable/upgradeable memory, has much bigger tile sizes (i.e. The UK has 270 odd tiles in City Select, in City Navigator it has 18). Now imagine plotting a route and uploading tiles around it... there will be a huge amount of mapping either side of your route that you don't need but are forced to upload. The end result is that you run out of memory part way through your route. The only Garmin mapping product that retains the small tile sizes of City Select is Metroguide, MetroWizzz/MetroGold make this routeable.

See here for my notes on the matter some time ago before I discovered Metroguide and MetroWizz

I will continue to upgrade my copy of City Navigator as the memory of the Quest is still big enough to contain the UK tiles. It's just for longer European trips where City Navigator can't be used for the above reason that I'd use Metroguide.

So far, though I admittedly haven't noticed and issue on motorways, it's worked well. The downside is that roundabouts are not announced as such (as cookie says), however, a glance at the screen shows exactly what you'd expect to see using City Nav. if there is any ambiguity. This points to the suggestion that there are some road attributes lacking, roundabouts are seen as a small, circular, one way road. As far as route plotting in Mapsource is concerned I haven't noticed a difference between City Navigator and Metroguide in the roads followed for a particular route.

Obviously MetroWizzz is of little interest to users of Garmin units with sufficiently large amounts memory fitting the entire map-set for Europe but for Quest users it's a godsend.

 

[cookie]

As Cookie says you need to be careful buying on eBay

i edited that bit out as i didn't want to get into the whole pirate software issue here.

you make a very good point about the tile size for quest owners

 

[ampthill]

City Navigator, designed for the more recent units with large, cheap removable/upgradeable memory, has much bigger tile sizes (i.e. The UK has 270 odd tiles in City Select, in City Navigator it has 18). Now imagine plotting a route and uploading tiles around it... there will be a huge amount of mapping either side of your route that you don't need but are forced to upload.

you make a very good point about the tile size for quest owners

Might be worth noting that tile sizes are a lot smaller in CN9 than they were in CN8 - this makes it easier to fit the required maps into a Quest. For example if there were 18 for CN8 there are now 49 tiles for the UK in CN9.

Peter

 

[chasr]

I am currently running v6 on my Quest and would like to upgrade to v9 but garmin will not allow this as they are waiting for v10 . Is there any other way I can upgrade

Why the hurry? CN10 is due imminently. Even if you have a trip in the immediate future, CN6 is not that inaccurate. I'd stick with 6 until you can get 10.

 

[floyd]

I managed to order the disc for cn10 today so hopefully it will arrive in time