Fed up with Garmin Mapsource locking/restrictions

It is not gone till customers stop paying for it.

I think I must own one of the last non-crippleware maps that Garmin sold
before they went to the nickle-and-dime-the-customers-to-death model.
I've been putting it on my successive GPS's for years now.

Perhaps Garmin will be forced to smell the coffee. Google updates their
over-the-air maps and routing info all the time. They either have
automated it or their little elves work overtime. After a few trips on
a local road (Route 84 to Livermore, CA) that was re-routed and
straightened a year or two back, it magically appeared on my smartphone
map program. After I took a turn that cut quite a bit off the path of a
suggested route a few times the routing information was updated to use
the path I had taken. (I assume the routing database had an incorrect
"no left turn" restriction or something similar in its database.) The
future is free and frequent map updates. If Garmin won't compete on
those terms they will start slipping into irrelevancy. Their lead in
the offline market isn't only going to last much past the point when the
smartphone crowd starts caching large portions of their maps on the
phone itself.

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht
If the airwaves belong to the public why does the public only get 3
non-overlapping WIFI channels?

"...another $149, which is twice the price of the update again...."

And 50% more expensive than a new nuvi 255 with full up-to-date (2011)
Europe mapping - now available for $100 in UK including 17.5% tax.
Crazy

How do the other major (and minor) civillian GPSR makers handle maps,
updates and installation on multiple units?

Do they offer PC applications similar to MapSource?

--
Bert Hyman        St. Paul, MN        bert@iphouse.com

classical problem with digital media - hence Digital Rights Management -
as with CD's, DVD's, etc -

How can you tell the difference between a single individual
with multiple GPS devices wanting to upgrade them all in a legal way
VS
someone getting multiple copies and selling them...

hmmm -
now that I wrote that - the key would of course be the serial numbers,
since those are locked to the maps & upgrades.
So - it would seem to make sense to be able to "upgrade" at a reduced rate
for all the units registered under the same Garmin ID...

The current licencing scheme doesn't prevent selling.