How to do it?

I have a StreetPilot 2720 and a Dell netbook. I have mapsource on the
netbook. Is there a way to hook the GPS up to the netbook and have the
netbook screen display what is on the GPS? Would it work with Google Earth?

I have a StreetPilot 2720 and a Dell netbook. I have mapsource on the
netbook. Is there a way to hook the GPS up to the netbook and have the
netbook screen display what is on the GPS? Would it work with Google Earth?

Google Earth says that it works with the Garmin GPS receiver. I am in the
middle of trying that out now. I do know that a PC gives smashing results
once you get the receiver and the software program worked out. A computer
CPU is about a hundred times more powerful than a GPS CPU and a computer
screen is about twenty times bigger. The software does not care because GPS
software is like child's play to a real computer with a 3Ghz processor and a
2Ghz video card and so on and so forth.

I am somewhat surprised that GPS on PC is not a bigger deal. A dedicated
GPS is so limited in so many ways.

A netbook PC is 250 bucks. A receiver/software bundle from MS or DeLorme or
Garmin is sixty bucks. That is a whopping total of 310 bucks. And it will
do more than some six hundred bucks dedicated GPS unit and do it on a way
bigger screen than you can actually see.

Some GPS blogger or activist or hobbyist should get all over this. Not me,
I do not care that much nor am I at all organized.

Imagine a hiker with a hiking staff that had a piece jutting out that held a
netbook and the GPS receiver taped on top of the staff. He or she would
never get lost so long as the netbook had power. So imagine that the staff
was hollow and held about eight or twelve D cells. Hmm...now you are on to
something.

Or imagine a simple Garmin Nuvi in a car that would toggle from normal
street directions to topo maps at the push of a button.

Or imagine a Super Nuvi that held two or three or four AAA batteries and had
the road maps and the outdoorsy maps. Now you would have one bitching GPS
that would run on car current or battery current.

Maybe somebody has already dreamed up off of this. I just cannot find it.

wrote:

>I am somewhat surprised that GPS on PC is not a bigger deal. A dedicated
>GPS is so limited in so many ways.

I don't imagine there'd be much of a market for it. For the very small
number of people who think a standard GPS screen is too small, there
are devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the iPad.

>Imagine a hiker with a hiking staff that had a piece jutting out that held a
>netbook and the GPS receiver taped on top of the staff. He or she would
>never get lost so long as the netbook had power. So imagine that the staff
>was hollow and held about eight or twelve D cells. Hmm...now you are on to
>something.

Most people could walk about twenty feet with such a contraption. Do
you drag your hiking staff behind you, or do you actually pick it up
at every step like the rest of us? In short, your idea needs work. :)

>Or imagine a simple Garmin Nuvi in a car that would toggle from normal
>street directions to topo maps at the push of a button.

They all do. When compiling map-sets from MapSource to send to your Garmin
GPS device, just select those map-area tiles from City Navigator that you
want, and then ones from any topo map data that you want. (Use the map
selection drop-down in MapSource (top left on screen) to select a new
map-set and select another's map-area tiles as well before loading to GPS.)
When loaded into the GPS go to the Map-Setup screen, select the map-set
that you want to display, by pressing the Menu key when on the Map-Setup
screen and when the cursor is highlighting the little "i" icon. Select
"Hide" or "Show" on those map-sets that you want to see and use.

If one or more map-sets are made transparent (with some little hacker
utilities, like "MapSetToolkit" or "Transp_2A", the latter much easier to
use for that purpose only), then you can even overlay them on top of each
other as needed. The only problem being, if using a transparent topo map
over City Navigator data, the roads in one set may be slightly offset from
another by a few meters/yards, so roads will/may appear as doubled-up
parallel lines. I have 15 different map-sets loaded into my Garmin Etrex.
From Range & Township data (to find property border/markers and geodetic
benchmarks), Land Usage data (to find public lands for camping/hunting), 2
different topo map-sets (3 if including hi-res state-park data when in a
park), trails data, to lake depth data, etc. I just turn on the ones I need
at the time. If I need GPS navigational assistance for those maps that lack
the required data for that feature, then I just turn on the City Navigator
data temporarily until no longer needed..

"Kev Hubbard" wrote in message

>Or imagine a simple Garmin Nuvi in a car that would toggle from normal
>street directions to topo maps at the push of a button.

They all do. When compiling map-sets from MapSource to send to your Garmin
GPS device, just select those map-area tiles from City Navigator that you
want, and then ones from any topo map data that you want. (Use the map
selection drop-down in MapSource (top left on screen) to select a new
map-set and select another's map-area tiles as well before loading to GPS.)
When loaded into the GPS go to the Map-Setup screen, select the map-set
that you want to display, by pressing the Menu key when on the Map-Setup
screen and when the cursor is highlighting the little "i" icon. Select
"Hide" or "Show" on those map-sets that you want to see and use.

If one or more map-sets are made transparent (with some little hacker
utilities, like "MapSetToolkit" or "Transp_2A", the latter much easier to
use for that purpose only), then you can even overlay them on top of each
other as needed. The only problem being, if using a transparent topo map
over City Navigator data, the roads in one set may be slightly offset from
another by a few meters/yards, so roads will/may appear as doubled-up
parallel lines. I have 15 different map-sets loaded into my Garmin Etrex.
From Range & Township data (to find property border/markers and geodetic
benchmarks), Land Usage data (to find public lands for camping/hunting), 2
different topo map-sets (3 if including hi-res state-park data when in a
park), trails data, to lake depth data, etc. I just turn on the ones I need
at the time. If I need GPS navigational assistance for those maps that lack
the required data for that feature, then I just turn on the City Navigator
data temporarily until no longer needed..

Holy Cow! I am impressed. You must be an expert at this stuff.