Mapsource For Dummies: Part Three - Transferring Maps to your GPS

Well for me this is a serious problem. According to the last person I spoke to at garmin they up date mapsource about 4 times a year and to have to keep going through a complicated procedure to keep a gps up to date isn't acceptable. Yes I understand the reason for the secondary memory, to be able to add minor additions, routes, waypoints etc., but there should be an easy way to update the primary mapping.It only needs the program to ask if you're sure that you want to proceed to overwrite the primary memory before it allows you to do it. Even if you did accidently erase the primary memory the information is:-, a/ still on your pc and b/ still on your original cd. I don't think many people would pay £1000 for a Bmw gps system if in 3 months the info on it would be out of date and not easily updated, or am I on my own in thinking this.

Silverfox, I think you need to go back to basics and start from scratch.....I suspect you're confusing yourself :)

Mapsource is not installed on your GPS.....Mapsource doesn't have any mapping (other than a very very basic 'base map' that pretty much only shows the main motorways, 'a' roads and so on, and which you can pretty much ignore in terms of functionality)

Mapsource is simply an interface programme that you use to load points of interest, waypoints and mapping onto your GPS with, or use on the PC to view and manage that information, create and tweak routes and so on before uploading it to the GPS .

Mapsource is, as Garmin appear to have told you, updated several times a year.....not the mapping though, these updates are to the interface, the functionality of Mapsource and you do not need to update your GPS at all....in fact, you can use the update wizard on the Garmin site to change and update Mapsource and it's dead easy and automatic.

The mapping itself tends to only be updated once every year or so and there are lots of different products, CN (City navigator) and so on....and even when they come out, they're 'out of date' as new roads spring up all the time.......short of having a new fangled GPS that has live updates as you drive (ie the mapping is held on a server elsewhere and is provided and downloaded to your GPS as you go) you will not ever get fully up to date maps.


In your case, I think you really need to understand this crucial difference between 'Mapsource' and whatever mapping product you're using....it'll put a whole new slant on you saying
According to the last person I spoke to at garmin they up date mapsource about 4 times a year and to have to keep going through a complicated procedure to keep a gps up to date isn't acceptable.

Hope that helps :)
 
In your case, I think you really need to understand this crucial difference between 'Mapsource' and whatever mapping product you're using....it'll put a whole new slant on you saying


Hope that helps :)

Reading the first part of this might help. Really silverfox should have started his query in a separate thread instead of in this stickied toutorial thread
 
Yes it does help alot, I was getting the wrong end of the stick, It does make it alot clearer, but maybe some of the people at garmin ought to know this as garmin person No 2 told me map source is updated 4 times a year to cater for new housing estates etc. springing up all the time. I still don't understand if mapsource on the gps doesn't have this detail how can I put an address on the gps and find it. Most confusing. I thought by down loading new versions of maps onto my gps it would overwrite the old version where necessary. Obviously I'm wrong.
 
Sorry, I have put this in the wrong place, I realised when it was too late, but once people started replying I felt I had to carry on. I do understand about using mapsource for routes and waypoints on my pc and transfering them to the available memory on the gps. All I want to do is occasionaly down load new mapping to my gps to cater for any alterations/additions that occur fom time to time instead of the gps telling me I,m off route...Recalculating
 
The last person I spoke to at garmin informs me that the only way to create more space on the unit is to reinstall the original mapsource onto my pc with the original unlock code. Then transfer 1map tile with not much info on it, ( like a piece of the sea ), to my gps. This will overwrite all other maps on my gps, just leaving a piece of the sea on my gps and nothing else. Theoretically this will leave loads of space to download the updated mapsource. I've just tried to do it and my cd reader has just packed in.

Have you done this yet?
 
No my cd writer/reader still won't play ball, but from what bumpkin replied yesterday this is the wrong advice.
 
So from what I now think I understand, Do I just have to buy the latest City Navigator to download to my unit to update all the maps and will I be able to get all Europe on it
 
So from what I now think I understand, Do I just have to buy the latest City Navigator to download to my unit to update all the maps and will I be able to get all Europe on it

Probably not, assuming you've read the thread I linked to, you'll know a Garmin update may cause problems to a BM GPS. Because, Garmin admitted they shouldn't have sold me a CN EU update disc for my BM GPS.
 
Thanks John, Just been on the garmin website into '' my garmin '' and its telling me that there's a updated version of mapsource CN Europe 2009 available for my gps for $129.99 so they still don't seem to have learned from the problem of selling you something that doesn't work on the Bmw unit. I give up. Sorry to have wasted everybodies time
 
Absolutely no help to silverfox but I think the moral of this story, and quite a few others, is to not buy a BMW branded Garmin. Buy the original product instead. You get more for less money (I believe that the BMW Zumos don't come with a car cradle).

I'm not sure if the update process I used for my 2720 to convert the primary mapping from North American to European would work, the firmware, for both NA and Euro models, is the same but I believe that the BMWs use different firmware so there could be a potential issue. Without anyone trying it we'll never know unfortunately, I would say the risks are higher doing it to yours because of this.
 
Sorry to have wasted everybodies time

You've not wasted as much as I did trying to update my Nav 3. Nav 2 etc had been no problem, but at some point BM and Garmin seem to have diverged on the mapping / software / hardware that intorduced compatability errors.

To get the update onto my Nav 3 I sent it away to Garmin and it came back ok. Might be worthwhile asking them if they could do it for you?
 
Just to update everyone I have e-mailed BMW with the problem. I'll post whatever they reply
 


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