Laptop GPS World

It does go to show, we are better off at our own Trial & Errors and thanks to Ken and Terry I believe, we make more convincing progress than the Garmin Support we are supposed to rely on, its "THEIR product" they want to sell but are NOT ready with the right consistent answers... !

Thanks for the earlier post Ken, you are right abt the height and purpose with any closer views... perhaps, we are more congested and in seeing more cluttered POIs than what I noticed on the American routes... with little POIs and shops etc like being close to an outback location.

Can any or Ken again... consider the advantage of a BT GPS receiver that has a battery support of almost 55 hours continuous use and being able to capture or fix firmly on 20 satellites? They are usually bought by ppl with PdAs and smartphones having BlueTooth but will it serve well with a laptop with BT too?

Thanks for the anticipated answers.

I have no experience with a Bluetooth receiver. (I just got one and discovered that, although my laptop is "bluetooth ready", it doesn't have a bluetooth radio in it!!!)

I think it is fair to say that anything which works well with a PDA will be a good thing for a laptop. My reasoning is that PDAs are very challenged because of their size limitations. Even more so than laptops. So if the bluetooth device can run for a very long time on its own battery that's a great thing for a PDA user, and should be a good thing, also, for a laptop user.

Just my opinion and no experience to back it up.

What about the advantage of getting a fix from twenty satellites instead of the usual twelve? There is a potential advantage of better accuracy. But that depends so much on whether there are twenty satellites in view of your location. It is very often in my travels in Canada that I do not even have twelve satellites in view. Sometimes the chart in my GPS will show twelve, or more, in view but many are too low near the horizon to get a signal from. So for practical purposes you would need to know if there will be twenty satellites in position to receive from, often enough to be useful.

You should be able to tell from your current GPS if your software will show you the chart with the satellites and their positions as seen from your current location. If you regularly see more the twelve displayed inside the circle and they are not way out near the edges of the circle you might get a small accuracy benefit.

Again, just my opinion, but this is based on some experience with the usual receivers that will do twelve satellites.

EDIT: Ooops, I almost forgot one thing: will your software support any more than twelve birds even if the GPS receiver will lock to them???

...ken...

While a GPS receiver may have more than 12 channels, it will not let you 'see' more then 12 satellites (but it may be capable of tracking more then 12 of them internally).

IMHO - not a feature to be concerned about. As Ken says, seldom you will see 12 of them anyway.

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

Same experience here guys - having owned and run a software development company for years I understand how hard support can be but this is SO basic. I have not yet been through the unlock procedure yet so I am sure I will be in for a surprise or two. I assume you can not say "unlock" City Nav with MapSource unless you have a GPS attached (to provide a serial number)? If this is so, and I use say my Garmin 72, what will happen if I then disconnect the 72 - can I still use the maps for planning purposes? What happens If I then attach the GPS device that comes with the 20x bundle - do the maps suddenly dissapear, or can I still use them (and nroute) with the different GPS device? Having re-read my qestions it seems to me I amd still somewhat confused - I had best go buy the maps and load em up into nroute/mapsource and give it a go

David, the short answer is: once you unlock the maps in MapSource to your Garmin 72 you can use MapSource to work with those maps as much as you want without ever connecting the 72 to the PC. You can connect any other Garmin device(s) to the PC and MapSource could care less. You can still work with the maps on the PC once they are unlocked to any Garmin device.

Transferring maps to the Garmin devices is a different story.

Looks like I need to get ambitious and do a post about Garmin maps.

It has been quite awhile since I needed to unlock a Garmin mapset but as I recall you do not need to have the device connected. You just need to input the unlock code and the device serial number into the Unlock Wizard in MapSource. Once you do that the maps are unlocked in MapSource.

I think some Garmin devices contain their own unlock codes and the MapSource Unlock Wizard is capable of retrieving the unlock code from the device. Of course the device would need to be connected in this case.

But I won't swear to this. My memory is not what it once was and I don't have a locked map set to test with right now. Perhaps someone with a better memory than I, or someone who has unlocked Garmin maps recently, can chime in to confirm this.

Once the maps are unlocked in the MapSource Unlock Wizard, that means two things:

1. You can use them in Mapsource in perpetuity. If you make sure you back up the unlock codes (I back them up to both MyGarmin and also to a file on disk. You can do this any time using the Unlock Wizard.) you can restore those unlock codes at any time in MapSource and use the unlocked maps in MapSource as you move from computer to computer. Just reinstall the maps and MapSource from your original CD/DVD, download and install the latest MapSource update, run the Unlock Wizard and restore the unlock code from either MyGarmin or the backup file on disk. Bingo, you're back in business with MapSource for planning (and nroute for navigation if you like).

2. You can create a map file for use on the Garmin device that the unlock code was tied to when you input its serial number into the MapSource Unlock Wizard. You can create that map file on any computer that contains the maps that have been unlocked to that device (see point 1 above) and it will work when you load it onto that device.

Note: When you have unlocked a Garmin mapset to a particular Garmin device you can compile and transfer a map file (gmapsupp.img) to other Garmin devices but it will not work on them. Each Garmin device that has the capability of having maps loaded to it "knows" its own serial number and "knows" how to check to make sure the map file has been unlocked to its serial number. If not, it will refuse to use the maps.

You can use the same Garmin mapset (eg. City Navigator North America 2009) to produce map files for multiple Garmin devices. You do not need to get another copy of the map product. You do need to get another unlock code from Garmin for the other device(s) and they charge for the extra unlock codes.

Once a Garmin mapset is unlocked using the MapSource Unlock Wizard, those maps are also available for nroute to use for navigation. So if you install the mapset and Mapsource onto your laptop and unlock the mapset to the Garmin 72, you can connect any GPS receiver to the laptop and use the laptop and nroute as a personal navigation device. If the receiver is a non-Garmin device you will need something to translate the data from the NMEA format to the proprietary Garmin format. I use the receiver that came with Microsoft Streets&Trips 2008 and the shareware program Franson's GPSGate to use nroute for navigation with my laptop. nroute can use any of the four Garmin map products that I have unlocked in MapSource to my Garmin iQue 3600.

As far as I know, the only time MapSource looks for a connected device is when you use the Transfer menu. Then it needs to go out and see what is attached that it knows how to transfer stuff to and from so it can give you a list to choose from. Othewise it just checks its internal list to see which of the installed mapsets have been properly unlocked and lets you use them in MapSource as much as you like.

I hope that helps at least a little bit.

...ken...

All makes perfect sense Ken and seems perfectly logical to me, which is a relief to see that there is something logical about Garmin's protection policy . I intend to use nroute until my Mobile PC arrives from the states since I cant buy it in Australia yet.

Thanks alot

Hi David,

I think Garmin will come to regret releasing Mobile PC in the way they have done. They should have anticipated these issues because they know how all this stuff works. It's not rocket science.

The problem they created for themselves is that they've been too successful making Mobile PC act like a standalone personal navigation device. From the perspective of using it, it's very much like a PND. But from the perspective of map management - specifically, unlocking - it's not a standalone device. So they've had to do hacks to it.

In the software-only version, the software is married to the mapset that comes with it and that's the end of it. You want to update to a new version of the maps, you buy a whole new copy of Mobile PC when it's available with the new maps. In fairness to Garmin, the new version of Mobile PC with new maps will be cheaper than buying an update DVD for the same mapset and it's no more difficult to install the new version of Mobile PC than it is to install and unlock the update DVD for the map update.

So the only hangup with the software-only version is that you're stuck with the map product that you buy it with (eg. North America, Australia, whatever). You can add maps to it but only if they are maps that do not need unlocking.

In the GPS-20x version you have something that's more like a standalone piece of Garmin hardware because it comes with a Garmin device that does have a serial number to unlock maps to. Unfortunately it appears that the GPS-20x is not the best USB GPS receiver on the market in a number of ways.

In my case, MapSource and nroute are the perfect combination. Any stuff I have unlocked for my iQue 3600 is usable on the laptop with nroute and any GPS receiver I want to use. nroute isn't as pretty as Mobile PC but there are a lot fewer annoyances.

...ken...

hi Guys,

I'm back from some happy times away. Looks like there was no updates or follow ups on this with Ken's last post, i suppose David had booked some success as well on his front as I did too with some navigational achievements with the basic maps which I wasn't initially.

After obtaining some extra detailed help from elsewhere, here's what I'll share with this Forum.