Garmin MapSource Europe Select Street Map CD-ROM (Windows) Review

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(More customer reviews)You might be asking yourself, should I get the City Select Europe or the City Navigator Europe for about twice the price? I can't answer the question for you but I can say that I just returned from a 3 week trip where we drove all over Switzerland and France (including Paris) using City Select Europe and I'm glad I made the purchase.
I loaded my 2610 (North America basemap) with a good portion of eastern Europe before I departed. Once there, I was surprised how quickly the GPS acquired satelites and provided position and directional information. The GPS did a fine job of directing us from the airport to our hotel, from the hotel to sights in the area, to our hotel in Paris, to side trips to Dijon and Basil, etc. Worked equally well in cities and between cities.
The only problems I found, and these are not major ones IMHO, are:
* Once the GPS told us to take exit 46. But the exits have no numbers!
* Several times the GPS told us to take an exit using a description that was not on the exit.
In both cases, the audible directions ("in 2 kilometers exit right") and maps (showing the turn) were correct.
So what's the difference between City Select and City Navigator for Europe other than the price? I contacted Garmin, they say that "City Navigator handles rotaries (roundabouts) better". I did not see any problems with roundabouts during my trip.
I suspect that the City Navigator has more points of interest loaded, but I don't know this for a fact. Bottom line, I would recommend City Select Europe to anyone with a 2610 needing to travel in and around the countries it covers.

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Garmin's MapSource City Select Europe v6 cartography software contains updated detailed maps of major metropolitan areas throughout Western Europe, making it the perfect vacation planner or orientation tool. The software also offers trip and waypoint management functions that work with nearly all Garmin GPS units, excluding the GPS 100 family and panel-mount aviation units.Its detailed maps describe motorways, national and regional thoroughfares, and local roads, all with attributes such as turn restrictions, speed categories, and other features. The software displays points of interest such as locations for food and drink, lodging, border crossings, gas stations, hospitals, and more.When using a locked MapSource product, the real-time track plotting function will only work with GPS products that have valid unlock codes that work with City Select.When using your GPS V, GPSMAP 196, NavTalk GSM Phone, iQue, GPSMAP 60C, or GPSMAP 60CS with the City Select Europe v6 MapSource CD, you'll be able to view and download maps from all of the regions shown outlined in the product's technical data section. The CD also contains attributes to automatically calculate routes on your compatible GPS. A certificate included with this software explains how to obtain a code to "unlock" the entire CD-ROM free of charge.Note: MapSource City Select Europe is also included with the purchase of an Atlantic GPS V Deluxe, NavTalk GSM Phone, iQue 3200 Atlantic, iQue 3600 Atlantic, or Quest device. Prior to use, this CD must be unlocked via Garmin's unlock pages at www.garmin.com or by telephone.

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Garmin MapSource City Navigator Europe (CD-ROM) Review

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(More customer reviews)I just returned from a trip to Europe. For our trip we flew in to Rome, drove to a rural area an hour outside Florence, spent a week there and drove to Florence, then on to Parma, the Loire valley and finally on to Paris. I purchased this software with the Garmin GPSMap 60Cx and offer the following comments.
1 - Ignore the picture showing V6 - This REALLY is version 8 for sale.
2 - The software was mostly easy to use. The download / upload process was relatively pain free and reasonably fast. There is no need to delete the existing maps in the unit before loading a new map in - your upload simply writes over the current maps.
3 - The only bugs I noticed have to do with getting at the underlying directions for Routes you create. I found that selecting the route did not always work, but that clicking on the route on the map and then clicking on Properties to get to the Directions solved the problem.
4 - The turn-by-turn directions were mostly spot on. However there were some places in Italy where I ran in to areas that were recently / currently under construction and in these areas, some wrong turns were indicated. The most useful feature in these circumstances was the automatic recalculation for directions.
5 - When you zoom in to a quarter mile radius, the location of restaurants, local attractions, etc show up with useful symbols, sometimes with amusing results. Outside the door of our hotel in Florence I turned on the unit and saw no fewer than 15 pizza symbols (pizzerias) within 2 blocks of our hotel.
Now on to the cons
6 - The Route function does not seem to work as advertised. You are supposed to be able to create a Route between two or more points on your computer and then download them to your device. The only problem is that the Route only works if you also include ALL of the map segments between the points. With a 64 MB limit on my device, this was often impossible. The result is that I had to download subsets of the map segments for my drive from Parma to Paris and then create routes for segments of the drive. If I did not have my laptop with me, I would have been out of luck.
A couple of suggestions for version 9. Please break up some of the larger areas into smaller maps. On the segment from Geneva to Paris, I passed through the very northwest corner of one map segment for maybe 15 miles. However I had to load the ENTIRE 6 MB segment in to memory. Alternatively, if the Route function can allow you to load in only the portion of the segment you will drive through, I would be VERY happy.
Also, I was shocked to find that the toll through the Mont Blanc tunnel was 39 euros. There were also numerous other tolls along the way from Parma to Paris - totaling over 115 euros. It would be nice to know this in advance to allow for planning purposes. Considering the fact that thousands of pizzerias are pre-loaded, information about toll roads doesn't seem like too much to ask for.

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Garmin City Navigator Europe Digital Map 010-10373-00 Digital Maps

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