In article et,
Mike Spera wrote:
On the Garmin site, it looks like the "City Select" CD set has been
replaced by the "City Navigator" CD set. There is no price listed for
City Select, but there are prices for City Navigator. Are they different
products or is this a replacement? Some avionics shops are selling kits
with the City Select CDs.

In my opinion, Garmin's land mapping product line is a little difficult
to decipher.

I believe that City Navigator is the "updated" City Select product.
They both appear to contain the same basic capabilities. The City
Navigator NT employs compression (not compatible with the 396) to shrink
the entire country down onto a SD card.



The Auto kit only comes with a 128 Mb card. How much of the US can this
card hold? What size would hold the entire US? How about just the
Midwestern third? Since I don't need the mount, I may be better off
buying the CD and data card separately if I need one larger than the 128
Mb card included in the kit.

What fits on the card depends on how much data is associated with the
locations you're trying to load onto the card. For example, I think I
can get just about the entire state of OH onto the card, but maybe not
much more than a couple major metro areas. I've found the card adequate
for the travels that I do, but I don't have a problem loading new map
data for my destination. Not as convenient as having the entire country
loaded, but it still works well.



I am looking to increase the utility of this $2350 airplane gizmo. On
the ground, I am pretty challenged so this might be useful. Any reports
of how it performs? I am interested in the full bore street detail right
to an address. Out of the box you can only get directions to a city. Not
too useful to me.

In my experience, the unit performs well and will get you close to the
destination address (same street, a few doors down). It rarely marks
the EXACT location of the destination, but occasionally it does.
Sometimes it just can't find the address. Most of the issues that I've
experienced have been minor, and are related to the Navteq map data.

I once had the system turn me onto a side street where I almost
immediately came to a dead end. Then I noticed there was a missing
bridge at the dead end (looked like it had been missing for quite a
while). Turned around, hit the main road, and picked up the side street
on the other side of the bridge, where my destination was located. Same
street, but the map data showed the bridge as still intact.



JKG