First things first: "torrent" is no worse than "gun" or "axe" or "car". You can use and abuse any of them. So, it's not about using a torrent but, rather, what you would use it for that matters.
Even more specifically, torrents are used for sharing files. So it comes down to what sorts of files you might be thinking about sharing. There are definitely some kinds of files that would be objectionable to offer, or ask, to share on here, regardless of whether the sharing was via torrents or ftp or email or smoke signals.
(Ooops, I hope the smoke signals comment doesn't hit too close to home with all the fire problems you folks are having.)
I understand and sympathize with your continued confusion. I don't think we've taken the trouble to explicitly seperate the functions of, say, Mapsource, nroute and Mobile PC. So, here goes. I don't promise you won't be even more confused when I'm done but I'll do my best....
Mapsource:
Garmin will sell you maps on CD or DVD. Without some sort of navigation device or software, these maps would be useless by themselves. So Garmin provides, on the CD or DVD, both the maps and a software program called Mapsource. The installation program installs Mapsource and the maps on your PC.
When the installer installs the maps, it installs them in a particular way that allows Mapsource to find them automatically. In a sense, the maps are installed "into" Mapsource and that's generally the way we talk about it when we refer to Garmin maps. You can have many Garmin maps installed "into" Mapsource on your PC. At the moment I have an even dozen "maps" installed in Mapsource. There are such things as City Navigator North America 2009,
Metroguide Canada v5, Topo Canada v2. These are all maps purchased from Garmin.
I also have Ibycus Topo 2.1. This is another Canadian topo mapset that a university student in Calgary assembled from free government map data and converted into Garmin map format. It's more up to date than the Garmin Topo Canada product. .... Okay, time for a brief sidetrack into the maps themselves:
Map Files: Map files are not maps as we think of them .. you know, those things that are generally pretty pictures on paper that we have all seen. The maps you use with navigation software have no pictures in them at all. They are databases. They contain data about the geography (lakes, rivers, etc) and terrain (elevation, etc) and manmade objects like roads and bridges. The software programs that are able to use this map data for either trip planning or navigation are able to read this data and convert it into (render) a picture on the screen that looks just like a paper map.
But these "map" databases contain a whole bunch more than just the data needed to render a pretty picture on the screen. They contain the designations we use to identify roads, eg. Highway #3, Interstate I47, Main Street, Johnson Crescent, Range Road 734. This allows you to search for, and compute routes to, intersections and contributes to the ability to search for and compute routes to individual addresses.
The other piece needed for finding and routing to addresses is the "civic" address. That's the house or building number, as in "123 Main Street".
Other information in the map database includes City/Town/Village names, points of interest (POIs) and names on the various geographical features, like Sylvan Lake and Athabasca River and Jasper National Park and Mount Revelstoke, etc.
Back to Mapsource:
Mapsource does a whole lot of good things for you. First, of course, it lets you view the maps. It also has very complete search capabilities to allow you to find addresses, cities, intersections, geographical features and points of interest. It has routing capabilities, so you can ask it to compute a route from Somewhere to SomewhereElse ... basically from any point that is included in the particular mapset you are viewing to any other point on that map.
If one or both of the locations are not "searchable", eg. the name or address of the place or feature is not found in the map database, you can still enter geographic coordinates (eg. latitude/longitude) and Mapsource will cheerfully find a route between the two. Or you can just point at two different points on the map and ask Mapsource to compute a route for you. This can be very simple (between two points) or arbitrarily complicated, eg. click on the starting point, then clicking on any number of points along the way where you want to stop and finally clicking on the ending location.
These routes can be saved with meaningful names, eg. Brisbane-to-Perth-via-Sydney-and-Victoria.
You can create and manage Waypoints in Mapsource. Waypoints are just single points that help you keep track of places. For instance, you can click on my house and create a Waypoint called "Kens Place". Mapsource will store it in the Waypoints list. You can also add a specific icon so that when you see "Kens Place" on the map it might show a little house icon.
In some similar programs these are called Contacts or Favorites. It's all the same thing. They contain some arbitrary name that you give them, the geographic coordinates and, optionally, an icon of your choice. In some cases, the Favorites can also contain the actual mailing address, phone number and the usual sorts of contact information. They can even have categories assigned to them to make it easier to manage them.
....mmmm.. Let's see, we've covered searching and routes and waypoints ... what else? Tracks. When you travel, as you travel, most nav programs can be told to create a "track" file of where you have travelled. This is sometimes refered to as "bread crumbs" (not by the programs but by the people talking about it). It's nothing more than a file containing some of the key points along the way along with the date/time stamp and some other bits of info. If you load a track file into Mapsource it will display the track superimposed on the map and it has a set of tools that allow you to edit the tracks.
Hikers and bikers find this useful for sharing places they like to hike and bike .. set their handheld navigation device to record a track, go for a hike or ride, load the resulting track file into Mapsource, use the track tools to clean up the track, save it into a shareable file and send it to friends or post it on their website or blog.
If you load a route or track file into Mapsource it has a menu selection that will let you display it in Google Earth (if you have it loaded on your PC). This will allow you to see the route or track displayed superimposed on the satellite view of that part of the planet. It's handy because instead of you having to export the route or track file from Mapsource and then import it into Google Earth ... Mapsource takes care of it directly by launching Google Earth for you and handing the file directly to Google Earth in the format it wants to see.
Mapsource is great for viewing the maps, finding things (with a good POI list in the map database it's almost like a portable Yellow Pages) planning trips and sharing information with others.
But Mapsource is not a navigation program. You cannot hook a GPS receiver to your PC and send GPS data to Mapsource. It has no ability to see it and use it.
Thus we come to nroute and Mobile PC. First...
nroute:
nroute has the same interface as Mapsource and uses all the maps installed into Mapsource. The difference is that it knows how to read the data from a GPS receiver and use it to provide navigation. That is, it knows how to place an icon that represents you or your vehicle onto the map on the geographic location that the GPS receiver is sending it. And it knows how to move the map underneath that icon so that it looks like you are moving on the map as you travel.
It can use routes that you have created in Mapsource and gives you both visual and audio guidance to help you follow the route.
With a set of Garmin maps for the part of the planet you want to travel in, the Mapsource program for planning your travel, and the nroute program to help you navigate, all you need is a Garmin GPS receiver and you're good to go.
Why a Garmin GPS receiver?
Garmin is justifiably paranoid. They expend huge sums of money to acquire the data used in their map files and to put them into a condition that allows them to be easily usable by common mortals. They want to get some of that money back ... all of that money back ... well, truth be told they want to get a lot more than their money back. Without a profit they'd be out of business in a week.
So Garmin requires that their maps be "unlocked" before they can be used. The way they do this is by associating the mapset you have purchased with the device ID of a Garmin GPS device. They create an unlock code for you that is based on the device ID of your Garmin GPS device.
You use the Unlock Wizard in Mapsource to unlock the maps. Once they are unlocked, you can use the maps and the associated Garmin GPS device with nroute to navigate.
If you have a Garmin personal navigation device, like an eTrex or Nuvi or StreetPilot or Zumo or Colorado or .... you can use Mapsource to unlock the maps to that device and then you can download those maps into the device, as well as transfering routes and waypoints and tracks and custom points of interest between Mapsource and the device.
Which brings us to....
Mobile PC:
The easiest way to think about Mobile PC is to imagine that you have installed a Garmin Nuvi personal navigation device into you PC. Mobile PC looks and acts just like a Garmin Nuvi. It has the same user interface, complete with the ability to use a touchscreen if you have one on your PC. It also has all the same features and functions. It even comes bundled with its own set of maps.
So, just like buying a Nuvi, if you buy Mobile PC with the appropriate set of maps, you are good to go. Just install it, connect a GPS receiver and you're in business. Nothing else required.
Mobile PC only comes with either City Navigator North America or City Navigator Europe. If those are the maps you need, that's great.
But if you need both, or if you need maps for somewhere else, there is only one way to get them into Mobile PC. That's using Mapsource. So, if you wanted to also use City Navigator Australia in Mobile PC, you would buy City Navigator Australia, which will come with Mapsource included, install Mapsource and City Navigator Australia on you PC, unlock the Australia maps and load them into Mobile PC.
So, if you only want to use Europe maps and nothing else, you can buy one of the Mobile PC bundles - buy the software-only version if you have a GPS receiver that works with your PC, or buy one of the hardware bundles if you need a GPS receiver, too. This will give you everything you would have with a Nuvi or StreetPilot or Zumo, which is pretty much everything you need for navigation and even some basic trip planning.
However, if you want some strong trip planning features you will find Mobile PC limiting. Not because it won't do most of the things you need to do for trip planning, but because the interface, which is so good for navigation purposes, is a real pain for some of the more sophisticated planning activities.
That's why Marvin suggests using
Mappoint Europe for trip planning and Mobile PC Europe for navigation. Well, that's half the reason.
Marvin is saying the same thing I am, that trip planning is not Mobile PC's strong point but it's way better for realtime navigation than Mappoint (or
Streets & Trips). It truly is just like having a really good dedicated navigation device in your PC.
He prefers Streets & Trips (and therefore, Mappoint in your case) to Mapsource for trip planning. It has all of the sophisticated trip planning features that Mapsource has and more. Some of the other features are very useful. I'll let someone else explain, if you care.
I hope that helps begin to clear the cobwebs. If nothing else, at least it should be good to help you get to sleep.
...ken...
or 
or 
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