T&T: Garmin Cartography (was: Updating basemap charts ...)

[Kevin Redden]

> -----Original Message-----
> Anyway, I thought the 492 unit (without the sounder) would work, ..........
> ................................The manager
> and a sales person in one of the local West Marine stores assured me
> that Garmin would have something available to update the base maps. Not
> being one to believe anything a sales person says without checking
> further, I asked Garmin tech support via a question-form on their web site.

 
Hi Bob,

I don't see why you would be concerned about Garmin's  proprietary cartography
products - they don't burn their customers too often with out of date
cartography - only as shown below!

In the '90s, they sold chartplotters with their proprietary G Charts. When they
decided to switch to Blue Charts, they abandoned their old customers who had
bought the G Chart units, leaving them with expensive hardware and no way to get
updated charts.

Then, they came out with their US Waterways CD, and sold it with their mapping
GPS units like the eMap. The cartography on the CD had every ATON in the US, and
although it did not have water depths, it was still quite useful. After I had
one for a year, I started inquiring about getting updates for the cartography on
the CD. After doing quite a bit of digging with sources at Garmin, it turned out
that from the day that product was first put on the market, it was intended as a
one-shot, with no plans for any way to update the cartography data base. Garmin
continued to sell that CD for several years, knowing that the ATON database was
years old and out of date.

For a fair number of years, Garmin has now been selling Blue Charts as their
standard cartography product. Unfortunately, the price to get updated CDs for
cartography that you've already purchased is atrociously high. They seem to want
to only sell new product, and not encourage current owners to buy updated
charts.

Garmin's web site now shows them hawking their latest chartplotters - and guess
what? They've done it again! The new units only run the brand new Blue Chart G2
charts, and not the standard Blue Charts they've been selling for the past six
or so years. How long do you think it will be until they orphan the owners of
the Blue Chart chartplotters -  the same way they orphaned the owners of the
earlier G Chart units?

Of course, all this begs the question that you raised. Garmin is selling a line
of chartplotter products like  the GPSMAP 492,  with built in cartography. These
products appear to have been designed and sold from day one with no plan to
support their customers with any way to update them - just as they did with the
US Waterways CD.

But hey - it's a great unit when you first buy it. Why would you ever worry
about Garmin abandoning you and sticking you with obsolete charting data?

Kevin