Frequent Questions

What are the differences between the Garmin 60CS and 60CSx?

For a thorough and practical answer to this question your best bet is to read Patrick Roeder's excellent review of the two units.

However, the main improvements in the 60CSx is that it will operate more reliably in difficult conditions (in cities with narrow streets or wooded areas in summer my 60CS will occasionally loose track of its position where the 60CSx probably wouldn't according to Patrick). That and the increased map storage memory available by using memory cards make the 60CSx a far better bet these days.

Given that I wish to use the unit to route my way from Land's End to John O'Groats, would I need both of the Garmin City Navigator 9 and Garmin Mapsource TOPO GB DVD V2?

The City Navigator software is all you need to plot your route and upload it to the GPS. The Topo data nice to have, especially if you are desperate to plot a route that avoids hills. If you just want to check the profile of your route you can find this out for free by uploading it to a site like Bikely.

Would you happen to know what the difference is between 'City Navigator Europe v9' and 'City Navigator Europe NT v9'?

I didn't but, the info on Garmin's web site indicates it is a difference in the way the map tiles are compressed. Not really a big deal now that maps can be stored on huge memory cards.

Do I need the Trip & Waypoint Manager software at all?

You will get Trip & Waypoint Manager (MapSource) with whatever Garmin GPS you buy. It is the software that actually communicates with the GPS to upload/download tracks, routes waypoints and maps. You add your other mapping products to this software to enhance what it can do.

Would you happen to know if the "City Navigator Europe versions" are the same as the "Atlantic Recreational Basemap" already preloaded onto UK units? In this case I would not need to purchase the former.

No they are not the same, basemaps are the default information a GPS ships with with no maps installed. They are basic in the extreme (usually only motorways and main trunk roads), very inaccurate and not routable. I had to rely on the basemap for some sections of my Scandinavia tour and it was worse than having no map at all!

In your opinion, would maps on CD or preprogrammed SD cards be better? I guess with CD you can work from the PC as well as the unit so its more flexible.

I would opt for the CD for the reasons you describe. The only downside I can see is that uploading maps to the GPS is a bit slow, but you don't have to do it very often.

From your experience, how long would it take to programme in the LEJOG route, given I am new to GPS mapping etc. ?

That's a tough one; I have spent months planning some routes before, but then I enjoy it.

Given that you will have good coverage of the UK you could just tell MapSource you are going by bike, stick a waypoint in for Land's End and one for John O'Groats and ask it to calculate the route for you. However, whilst that will keep you off the motorways, the route will not be all that pleasant. You can configure MapSource to use only minor roads but the it sometimes sends on on a 5KM detour to avoid 500Mtrs of A road!

For a quickish route design I would place waypoints in places you want to visit and on whatever roads you know want to use and then lat MapSource link them up. I would then check the whole route at a fairly small scale and change it as required.

Finally I would trace the resulting route using Tracklogs or MapSource's track tools into blocks of 500 track points (maximum individual track that can be uploaded to the GPS).

What has your experience been of the Tracklogs and Memory Map software packages for use with your 60C whilst cycling?

TrackLogs and Memory Map are both useful bits of software, I purchased a full copy of both and I have to say I found TrackLogs to be a far superior as a planning tool and stopped using Memory Map altogether.

Bear in mind that neither contain map tiles that can be uploaded to you GPS and do not negate the use of something like City Navigator, which you will still need to improve on the base map in your GPS.

Is the TrackLogs/Memory Map scale of 1:50,000 sufficient for cycling route/track planning?

I would say that 1:50,000 is perfect for planning a bike ride on the computer, but I wouldn't like to carry all the maps at this scale that would be required to cover an end to end trip. I didn't have a GPS when I did my JOGLE, so I used the pages torn from a 1:250,000 road atlas with the route highlighted on it.