Geoffrey:
Garmin doesn't care where you live when you register one of their products. I think possibly the description of your friend's problem was garbled slightly in transmission.
The problem that people encounter when they purchase a GPSR in North America and then bring it to Europe (or vice versa) is that the GPSR's contain cartography (maps) that are specific to each continent.
For example, the StreetPilot III comes with two sets of maps. It has a basemap, which is burned into the units memory when it is manufactured and cannot be changed by the user, and it comes with a CD containing maps for the continent in which it was sold, and an unlock key for those maps that allows you to use the CD with your particular serial number GPSR.
If you want to use American GPSR in Europe, you can purchase the corresponding European map CD (in the case of the StreetPilot III, this is the CityNavigator Europe CD), but the CD's are quite expensive when sold on a stand-alone basis. The European CityNavigator CD costs about USD $550 as a stand-alone product. I know this because I bought one out of my own pocket back in 2002. I live in Canada, but work in Europe, and I wanted to be able to use my SP III on both continents. I had bought it in Canada originally, so it came with all the North American maps. I was pretty shocked by the price of the European maps.
The map prices, by the way, are dependent on what the companies who collect map data charge Garmin for the data, and the prices the map companies charge Garmin are dependent on what the governments of the different countries charge them for provision of the data in electronic format. Garmin's role in the whole map CD business is limited to just purchasing the data from a company that specializes in collecting it (for example, Navteq) and then organizing it into a format that the Garmin GPSR's can read. So don't crap too much on Garmin for the price of the maps. If you want a benchmark, just go to a BMW, Ford or VW auto dealer and ask them the cost of a CD for an OEM automobile nav system that covers all of Europe. These auto manufacturers buy their map data from the same sources that Garmin uses.
A CD full of autoroutable Canadian map data costs about USD $80 standalone, a CD full of autoroutable American map data costs about USD $250, and a CD full of autoroutable European map data costs about USD $550.
PanEuropean
