NuMaps one time update $36.99

This is LAST year's map updates. The current map updates are 2010 maps.

Not such a good deal after all. Slick Best Buy tries again!!! LOL

The JPG is showing 2009 but the model appears as 2010 at other stores (See below). This might be the latest map at a good price.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=1107840...

http://www.gpscity.com/item-garmin-numaps-update-city-naviga...

This actually a pretty good deal for someone with a Garmin that's a few years old. I gave my Nuvi 200 to my daughter, I never updated the maps. She may want to at that price.

For $40.00 more I would buy the lifetime (for the life of the same unit) maps from Amazon.com which would entitle you to 4 updates per year.

I didn't know that Amazon had it. However, it's $60 more, not $40. Its still a good deal. I'm planning on doing this in spring with my 255w.

I really like Garmin as a company but I think their map update fees are WAY over-priced...Our tax dollars paid to create the maps that the NAVTEQ maps are based on, and our tax dollars pay to keep the maps updated (i.e. public records).

I could see paying maybe $24.99 a year for map updates, but $80 each time is ridiculous! Even the $100 lifetime is too much IMHO--again, our tax dollars create this data--there's very little cost to them to provide the updates.

Just out of curiousity, what do other GPS companies like Tomtom or Magellan charge for their map updates?

NP

It MORE then pays for it's self after a few updates,i already got back three times my money in updates. : )

Not sure what you base that one. Both Navteq and their competitor hire a lot of people to do ground truth work, not to mention other stuff. I drive by the Navteq local office here in Albuquerque often. I think there is little if any of that one-time US government digital road database all the cheap maps are based on in the Navteq product--do you have information otherwise?

No mapping company has enough time and money to hire a bunch of cartographers and map the U.S. from scratch. To my knowledge, all the maps of the U.S. (both print and digital) are based off of the government-funded USGS maps, and then updated from public records information from individual counties/cities, as well as user submissions of updates/errors.

Electronic nautical chart companies do the same thing--they take tax-payer paid for data from NOAA, and re-package it and sell it back to us. Fortunately, NOAA recently decided to make all of the charts available for free download--it would be nice if the USGS did the same.

NP

If all Garmin did was copy the maps verbatim, then yes, they really shouldn't charge anything. But its not that simple. They need to do is customize the maps for use in our GPSes. What they are charging for is the map formatting, verification process (yes, much of the info they use is freely available, but the time involved is not), and the programming required to both digitize it and make it available for your unit. No small task, I can assure you.

Poke around on the USGS's site, as well as the National Atlas. While the data is available, its not available in the way that Garmin provides it on their GPSes. That's why the USGS has a whole page dedicated to map professionals for making commercially available maps.

Does Garmin maintain map updates online that go back years? Really, if you buy a one time online update - you get the latest.

Another way to ask this: I just bought my Garmin 255w in August. If I would buy this update and wait until next year to use it - what map version would I get? This is a good price, but a waste of an upgrade so soon after my one free bee.

The free U.S. government digital roadmap of the US that has the basic attributes that allow use for navigation by means other than just looking at it is called TIGER. Most if not all of the cheap and really cheap map CD's that were available about ten years ago did provide this with rather little added value. (DeLorme at the time was one example at the not so cheap level--I've not kept up with them more recently).

As it happens I have direct personal experience with dreadfully serious error in the TIGER database, present then, and present today. A systematic shift in the position of items on the map vs. ground truth starts a few miles south of my home, and grows about linearly. At my home the East West error is a little over 800 feet. That magnitude of error renders it utterly useless for street level navigation in this neighborhood.

You can browse the TIGER data for any location by going to their browser at
http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl
and relocating to a point of interest. If you compare it to what is displayed on current Teleatlas or Navteq product, you'll get a first glimmering of how much is added value vs. free. The shape of the roads in this area is far, far more detailed in the current Navteq product. And that is not even mentioning such vital information for actual current functionality as allowed directions of turn in each intersection, average rates of advance by road segment, and much more. (I doubt you'll find an 800 foot offset in a randomly chose location--there must have been a geocoding error during initial setup here that just never got corrected).

I think Navteq and Garmin add a great deal of value. Of course there is a starting point not of their making--the earth's surface. Should no one be able to charge for any map because they all start from something not of their entire making?

Speaking of free downloads, I had not realized it but all the USGS 7.5 minute, 15 minute, and some other maps are available for free download from their website at:

http://store.usgs.gov/

If you browse to a location, mark a point, and click it, you get a link to download the things. Then you will have a quite nice picture of the data. See if you can tell the difference between having a picture of the data and actual being able to use it in the ways current GPSr/map products allow.