Garmin MapSource Topo U.S. 100K Features
- Trails and rural roads. city neighborhood roads
- Summit locations with elevation
- Terrain contours, topographic elevations
- Usgs Topographical Data At 1:100.000 Scale
Price: $72.55
User Reviews about Garmin MapSource Topo U.S. 100K
I bought the 100K Garmin maps primarily for traveling two track forest back roads. I compared it to the DeLorme Topo and for my area, the Garmin seems to do a better job of identifying land marks. I am basically satisfied, but Garmin has a lot of room for improvement.
1. There are two generations of the 2008 100K Garmin US Topo maps. This Amazon listing shows the blue and white jewel case and has a product number of 010-11001-00. The title says Topo U.S. 2008. This is the first generation. Somewhere along the line (I am guessing the fall of 2009), Garmin replaced this version with the second generation. The new jewel case photo has a black top and bottom border with a scenery picture in the center. The title says Topo U.S. 100K, but no year is mentioned. The part number has a 1 at the end, 010-11001-01.
The topo maps themselves are identical, but there are two product differences. The first generation is only for Windows, whereas the second generation works with both Windows and Apple. The second difference is the included map management software. The first generation comes with the Garmin program called MapSource. The second generation replaced MapSource with the new Garmin program called Base Camp. It is intended primarily for trail handheld units.
It is a crap shoot as to which you will get. I ordered from this listing showing the first generation, but I actually received the second generation. I had an exchange of e-mails with Amazon before and after the sale, but they have not done anything to fix the listing. The odds are you will get the new generation since high volume sellers should have sold all the old stock.
The only issue would be if you wanted the second generation for an Apple, and they sent you the first generation. The good news is that both MapSource and Base Camp can be downloaded from the Garmin web site. Seeing as the version on the DVD will be outdated anyway, you will want to download the current version.
2. The Base Camp software is a work in progress. I do not think it is even up to beta quality. In summary, it is not intuitive, it's slow and it is buggy. The primary reason to use it is to download and manage the new Birds-Eye aerials from Garmin. However, the software can only handle a limited number before it basically quits working. I can not help but wonder how Base Camp ever got approved for production status. Many of the issues had to be obvious during the most basic testing. I hope that the product will improve over time. It seems like Garmin comes out with an update every few weeks.
The good news is that you can have both MapSource and Base Camp on your machine at the same time. I use MapSource for most of my map management functions (loading maps, waypoints, routes, etc.) and just use Base Camp for Birdseye (till it died!).
3. These maps are not the best choice for hikers. They best serve folks driving the back roads in a truck, ATV, snowmobile, etc. The contour lines at 100K give you a good idea of the terrain without cluttering the screen like a 24K map would do. This is important since you will be zoomed out more when traveling in a vehicle vs hiking. The other thing I like is it does a good job in my area of travel of providing landmark names, such as springs, mountain peaks, streams, and stock tanks.
The biggest downside as mentioned in almost all the other reviews is the lack of accuracy in placing of the roads. I suspect it is because the roads were obtained from USGS topo maps that have not been updated in over 50 or more years. Sometimes the location is right on, then farther down the road, it is not even close because the road has been changed over the years. Garmin needs to get with it. The Garmin Streets map series displays the back roads correctly in most cases on the Nuvi, but the roads on the Topo map series are way off in many cases. Also be aware that the topo maps do not have routable roads like a street GPS map.
4. The maps require a lot of space, so depending on your GPS model, you may be limited on how much you can load. I have an Oregon 450 which handles a large SD card, so I do have the space. However, I have read there is a programming limitation on how many mapsets can be loaded at one time. So even if you have the space, you still may not be able to load the complete country due to this limitation. I was going to test it, but my four year old computer displayed a message that it would take over twenty hours to load all of the sets that comprise the country! I will have to test it some other time. The U.S. Topos that Garmin sells on the SD card gets away with this by dividing the country into much larger chucks, thus requiring less mapsets. I believe they made the mapsets small on the DVD so the maps would load on old units with only a small amount of memory.
Conclusion: Overall it is a good product to get the general lay of the land and to identify land marks. However, it is far from perfect. If you are a hiker, the 24K maps from Garmin or the free 24K topos from the GPS File Depot would probably be a better choice.
-- OK, But Problems
This product was easy to install and has been easy to use on my GPS. -- A great product
I am going through the reviews here and one thing that I can see is that a lot of folks have totally unrealistic expectations for this product. A typical "quad" map that you would use for hiking is at a scale of 1:24,000. The maps used in this product are 1:100,000 which are suitable for hiking in some cases. Mostly they are going to let you know general proximity to features such as mountains, rivers major roads and so on which might possibly save your bacon if you are lost. You are dreaming folks if you think you are going to get 1:24,000 scale quad maps for the entire US for $75 that all fits on to your little GPS unit. For instance 1:24,000 maps that cover all of the state of Oregon from the National Geographic State series is over 3GB of data and costs about $100. The amount of data that you can fit on SD cards now is amazing but not that amazing that you could fit the entire US 24k maps on a micro SD card. By the way the paper version of those maps used to cost about $10 just for one map that covered approximately 7 miles in a north south direction and was two and half feet tall. Digital versions of these that are easy to use for the general public have only been around for about 15 years. How quickly we expect miracles in the digital age!
Garmin does make a 24k product divided up into regions like the west coast states for $94 (Garmin MapSource TOPO! US 24k West Topographic Coverage for Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada (DVD)) which is availble on Amazon. Even this is pretty amazing to fit on to a micro sd card assuming that you can in fact load it all on. -- Realistic Expectations
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