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(More customer reviews)For those of you who are deciding between City Navigator and City Select, buy Navigator. Here are reasons I find over various forum and news groups when I was making my buying decision.
Garmin has about 8 different levels of street classifications, all the way from pedestrian and animal pathways to multilane controlled access highways. For each roadway, there can be up to 60 invisible attributes, indicating the number of lanes, number of stop signs or traffic lights per mile, speed limits, presence of medians, time of day restrictions, heavy vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle restrictions, and so forth. Whether these 60 pieces of data are included in the software or used by the GPS for its calculations is part of the feature set of the 3 map packages offered by Garmin.
The basic level (Metroguide) does not support automatic route generation. (Note: Metroguide 4.01 and below use data from TeleAtlas. So Metroguide 4.01 is the best version you can find that won't need an unlock code to use the routing function on your Garmin)
The intermediate level (City Select) supports automatic route generation, but does not contain certain 'high end' road attributes such as truck restrictions, time of day restrictions, stop signs per mile, mid-road barrier awareness, and various other road attributes.
The highest level (City Navigator) contains all those things, and is targeted for Garmin's higher end GPS's. This can explain the why Navigator's map data are much larger than Select. I bought the Navigator for my 60Cx and within the same order I also bought a 1GB microSD memory chip. The Navigator has about 1.6 GB map data. With 1GB microSD, I can hold the map about half of the US (from west of IL all the way to the east coast)
As far as the quality of map detail, I'd say it's about the same as MS Streets & Trips 2006, which I use a lot on my PC. I haven't found any errors yet. None of them has the railroads of Chicago CTA train, which, interestingly, are in Garmin's US Topo map. All have Metra railroads though.
For the actually performance and accuracy of the map, you could refer to the reviews of other Garmin's models that are dedicatedly made for in-car use and preloaded with City Navigator NT, such as StreetPilot i5, c340, and Nuvi 350, etc. Navigator NT uses the same data and only differs in compression techniques. From what I read, it seems about 80% of the people are happy with the routing result. To my experiences, by only giving start and end waypoints, I couldn't get my preferable route for most of the time. I have to specify several additional waypoints to "manipulate" how the route is calculated. (All software and online maps are like this so I have no complaint here). I am not planning to heavily rely on the turn-by-turn routing feature.
This review is for version 7, BTW
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Garmin MapSource City Navigator, North America DVD-ROM for Garmin StreetPilot GPS UnitsA GPS navigator is only as good as the maps it employs. Enter MapSource City Navigator North America, which comes with fully routable maps of U.S., Canadian, and Puerto Rican metropolitan areas. The detailed maps offer the perfect way to get around almost any North American city (and some countrysides, too), while offering more than six million points of interest, including restaurants, bars, hotels, attractions, movie theaters, gas stations, shopping malls, campgrounds, and more. Need a good back-seat driver for your next city-hopping road trip? Look no further than this DVD-ROM.
Designed specifically for Garmin's StreetPilot III, StreetPilot 2610, and StreetPilot 2650 vehicle GPS navigators, the disc also boasts detailed information on highways, interstates, business roads, and residential roads, with such attributes as turn restrictions, roundabout guidance, speed categories, and other navigation details. In addition, each DVD offers automatic routing, so you can easily generate point-to-point routes in MapSource or on the compatible navigators. And thanks to the trip and waypoint management feature, you can also transfer waypoints, routes, and tracks between your Garmin GPS and PC.
Other details include supplemental coverage of Hawaii (using unverified government data) and an Unlock Wizard that guides you through the unlocking process (required when downloading data to a data card or Garmin GPS). As with all Garmin Products, City Navigator North America comes with a one-year warranty.
Important Note about Map Updates: Due to our high volume of sales, almost every Garmin portable GPS navigator sold by Amazon.com will come with the most recent map version. If you ever need a map update, you can get one from Garmin at http://www8.garmin.com/unlock/update.jsp. You will need to have your device's serial number ready.
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