Are European Maps worth the money?

SteveW

I used the Europe maps a couple of weeks ago to navigate across France and into Switzerland. I found them useful, but I tried to avoid the peages, and TT2 wanted me to use them all the while. I used Autoroute Express to determine the border crossings and navigated to there by setting up a POI. I found the maps particularly useful navigating through Large Cities i.e. Reims, where we viseted a Champagne house. WWW.viamichelin.com is also a good site if you can get on it.

Steve

cepheus1

Thanks Steve,

I'm convinced - I need to buy the Europe Maps!

Where is the cheapest place to buy them please - anyone?
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Francois

I agree that it is a pain to have to plan your routes in phases by country. That was even the problem when I had a 64MB SD card and had to plan my routes in phases even within the same country. I had resolved that problem by buying a 256 MB card. However, I was wondering if you buy a 512 MB card and store maps of different countries in it linking the countries together, can I then set the origin, say in Germany and have the destination in France?

With regards to places where wa can buy cheap TT2 sofwares, I have searched in all the stores and I think all the vendors sell at suggested retail price. But if I am wrong, I would appreciate knowing where I can obtain the cheapest TT2 European Maps.

Another thing, I am looking for an IPAQ GPS receiver sleeve and found website that sells it at a reasonable price US$250 (£153). What do think? Worth ordering from the US? Any compatibility problems?

Thanks!!
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Francois

MikeB

Francois,

Having a larger memory card will not help here. This is because you have the option to load map segments say France North, Paris etc. The largest Segment you can load is the whole of France. Some country segments are combinations of countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland. But this doesnt help if you are travelling from France to Italy via Switzerland and Germany.
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Mike Barrett

DavidW

Cephus1,

www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk have the European map package for GBP114.99 (including free shipping) - which is the cheapest I've seen them. I haven't checked lots of vendors, though.

David

SteveW

I bought mine from the above website - good service, and also if you put two maps on the same card, you still can't navigate betwen them, you have to change maps. As I said, the only way round I found was to set up a poi on both maps either side of the border. This worked quite well, but you need to plan the crossing.

Steve

DavidW

It certainly looks as if the inability to route across map segments is a common frustration of many users.

For UK use, the current setup is reasonably OK - getting a 95MB map onto a storage card is easy and cheap enough on most systems. If you choose to keep a small map segment in faster memory (for example a 16MB segment in main memory if you can afford the memory), you can switch to the larger map when needed.

However, some of the full European maps are much larger (over 200MB), also the USA maps are all in segments of either a part of a state, a whole state, or a few contiguous states. It's clear from looking around that some US users are clearly unhappy with the current situation, as are some European users. It must be a nightmare if you live near a country border in Europe!

The POI is the best solution I've heard of yet. Do you find you can share the POI file between both maps if you put the POI right on the border - or is it a case of defining the POI separately on both maps?

David

cepheus1

Thanks David - I'll be purchasing the Europe Maps on Monday using your link

I would also be keen to know the answer to your last question about sharing the POI's?

I'll be taking my Laptop away with me, so Ill just sync my PPC and download the relevant country's map when I get to the border - should only take 15 mins or so - and I've got to take breaks anyway

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cepheus1

Hi Friends

Great site! I've beem "playing" with my TomTom Nav II for the past few weeks and think it's great!

Thing is, I am off to Spain in 2 weeks, driving through France and onto Spain. For that type of journey is it worth spending the crazy amount of money being asked to by the European Maps just so I have the part of France and Spain that I need for my journey?

Any advice would be welcomed. Has anyone bought and used the European maps for a similar journey? What's your verdict please

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MikeB

Difficult decision to be made here. I have used the European Maps in France, Spain, Switzerland. I have found the in those countries the detail and quality of the maps are excellent. This is not the case with all countries especially Portugal.

The main problem with TomTom is that you need to have an idea of your overall route. This is because you can only route using the current loaded maps. This means that when in France you cannot set Barcelona as your destination you need to navigate to a border crossing move into Spain and then load the Spanish maps and replan your journey.

Whether or not they are worth the money really depends on your financial situation and whether you might get further use out of them.
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Mike Barrett

cepheus1

Thanks for the reply Mike.

Money certainly isn't the issue, in as much as I would be prepared to pay the money just to use the maps once - if they were going to be really useful!

I thought I may have the problem you mentioned of having to plan the journey in "Legs" which is a bit of a pain to say the least

I am quite happy planning my route using AutoRoute and just following written directions for the journey because all I really need for the journey is a POI for things like petrol stations, toll roads and accomodation.

Any suggestions please?
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TonyP

The European maps already have all the major frontier crossings defined as POIs. To make it easier, you could define the one you want to use as a favourite.

Remember the French maps are over 200Mb so you need a 256Mb card unless you want to swap segments in and out all the time.

Talkingbollox

Just back from France via Eurotunnel. Dixons at the UK end are doing the European maps for under £111.

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