MartDavis said:
Nick,
Did you have to buy additional maps for the venture cx, or were the base maps OK? How much did the whole package cost?
Cheers
Hallo Mart... actually, on reflection I think it's a Legend Cx (it came with USB cable and 64Mb SD card). It was about £175 from whichever Internet supplier was cheapest at the time. The base maps are not very detailed; I bought the whole of Europe on
eBay for about £16, plus a 2GB micro SD card, and managed (after several failed attempts) to load it all into the GPS last night. It's a job best done in small chunks, because the GPS doesn't seem to like having the whole of Europe thrust at it all at once...
I'm still getting the standard base map when I start it up, and I haven't yet had an opportunity to sit down and work out how to go to the detailed mapping - but I know I should be able to see every road and street in Britain at least, because I've used it on my PC.
On my yellow eTrex (no mapping capability) I was used to using the compass arrow display (in conjunction with tracks planned on Tracklogs), and got quite comfortable with that. The Venture Cx's compass arrow screen is better - it has additional displays for distance and time to next trackpoint, which are very helpful, and a bleep just before a junction which saves staring at the GPS all the time. So I don't really feel a need for detailed mapping, but I will get round to trying it out this weekend.