Re: Magellan Crossover (2500T) vs. Garmin 478 vs. ??

J Evans wrote:

I am looking for one toy that can do a lot well, but may not be the best at anything. 75% highway, 10% small paths including forestry service roads, 10% coastal Georgia and the barrier islands, and 5% hiking.

Would like to upload and download maps, maybe a card for additional memory. I like the 3D map views and route previews. On marine and hiking, I need to set waypoints on the fly and be able to back track. It would also be nice to preset waypoints on the computer and upload them also.

I like the road, marine, and topo maps these units have available, but which units have the better maps. I know the Garmin 478 is about twice the money, but if it does all pretty well it may be worth it not to have three different units to haul around. Quality map availability (aftermarket if necessary) is important.

Outdoor magazine rate the Magellan well and a salesman at Basspro Shop directed me toward the Garmin after a few minutes of discussion.

I have not seen much of any good reviews (Joe, Jack, Dale?) on these models. I would like to find additional real user reviews on these units if ya'll can direct me to them. I would appriciate the group input on these two or even others that I should look at.

I still believe in Santa Claus :}

Thanks in advance.

Joby - Atlanta

You can use the Magellan Topo 3d maps on the 2500T outdoor nav program. You can't download them correctly, you have to have an SD card (2gb about $28 on Amazon) and a card reader. Use the Topo 3d program to create your region and generate the maps (with the 2500T's serial #), create a folder on the SD card called "Detail Maps" and put them in there. Put the card into the GPS unit. When you start the GPS it may or may not ask if you want to use these maps. If it doesn't, simply go to the "Change Region" option and you will see all the regions you created and loaded to the card.

I like the 2500T very much. I think the road nav is very good. The detail maps you can get for the marine nav are incredible. The outdoor nav is lacking somewhat in features, but it should get the job done. It does not, however, work well for geocaching. The closest you can zoom in is 200 feet, and when you get within 50 feet or so of the waypoint, it tells you you are there and stops navigating to it.

As to your specific questions. You can't upload/download much of anything directly too it, even though it has a USB connector. Dunno why this is, because they certainly have the capability to write the code to do it, but they didn't. I find it fairly simple to upload/download stuff from the SD card with a reader though.

You can see the topo maps in pretty good detail, but you can't view them in the unit in 3D. There are a TON of POI's in the topo maps. Mostly outdoor type POI's (mountains, springs, streams, hollows, gaps, pretty detailed road information and some things like restaurants and gas stations and stuff. The built in POI's in the road nav program are better for these things though.)

Creating waypoints on the marine and outdoor programs is pretty simple. It keeps a track log that can be saved and exported to the SD card. You can backtrack, although I've never used this feature. You can create waypoints and routes on your computer, although you would need 3rd party software to create these and a converter like gpsbabel to make them Magellan compatible.

I think that about covers it all, although I have rambled around a bit. If you have any more specific questions I can try to answer them.

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