Magellan Crossover GPS

Hi Bear

Well I have OziExplorer Software CD1 &2 with mouse Gps mouse & Moving maps, Natmaps & Raster Premium Maps of all Australia works great on Lap top Stand fixed floor.
Also have UBD Australian City Streets Digital Mapping on Lap Top

bear164
If you got yourself a Garmin Nuvi 660 , it will serve as a Phone Hands free kit, an MP3 player along with some very good other features , and when loaded up with T4A will give you the mapping software you require, Laptops are too big,
Also with 660 you can have Points of Interest, 1000s of them that will guide you to mant different stores , i.e Dick Smith ,Bunnings, etc along with Points will warn you of fixed Redlight /Speed Camera's, School Zones, or you can make your own and load them into the GPS .
Garmin GPS

Johnny Appleseed GPS



Doug

Hello Bear - had a quick play with a Crossover the other day. It comes with Australia wide 'turn by turn' mapping preloaded and you can also use DiscoverAus SD cards (DAST topo and Outback Tourer - Note these are not turn by turn ...just maps) which have far batter detail than the free maps available for Garmin devices that some people rave about (fair enough, they are OK and they are free but they are no where near as good as Magellan mapping products). Crossover seemed ok..didnt have time to sus out computer connectivity/compatibility for uploading/downloading tracks and waypoints - suggest you investigate this before purchasing as it is important.

If you are happy with small screen setup (as apposed to running a laptop) then do a bit of research into various PDA's (ie pocket PC..not PALMS) - OziExplorer is popular GPS mapping/navigation program that will run on most pda's. There is a range of topo maps available and 250,000K scale (same data as T4A and shonky) is worst case scenario for any area of Australia but other map products for Oziexplorer offer better detail for some areas. There is also free software that allows viewing of the free Garmin maps mentioned in previous posts ...so if you do get a PDA instead of a Garmin specific device you will certainly be no worse off in this respect.

Personally wouldn’t bother with a laptop simply due to size...but some people like them so not my call - yours. Again, OziExplorer is the pick for software to use if you head down this path.

Cheers
Greg

Howdy Bear, if your going to spend upto $1200 you would be better off buying a Ipac 5965 from $360 at Calculator and Organiser King ,
which you could also run Ozi Ce , and with lots of money spare buy a Garmin 60C with Shonkymaps or Magellan with the better DiscoverAus maps , this way you'll have auto routing in the city by using Tom Tom.

First I must tell you what I have...a Magellan Meridian Gold with Discover Aus, about four years old...a lap top with DS NatMap Desert Tracks (Hema).....a O2 Xda Exec top of the range smart phone pda bull bleep bull bleep Tom Tom on it Ozi CE.
Well Tom Tom is good Magellan and Discover Aus brilliant but Ozi CE (I know I am not the smartest cookie on the block but bleep it hard to use ge I cannot even get it to find the bloody GPS hahaha.
So if I had the money I would be getting the Magellan Crossover and a cheap lap top for when you want to plan a trip.
And if you have a boat you can buy Blue Charts for it and put it on the lap top for bigger screen.

Cheers Bruce.