August 2, 2009 Update: Lane Assistance DOES NOT work with this map set. I have this loaded on a Garmin Nuvi 765T which does lane assistance in NA. During this trip to France, nowhere did lane assistance appear (Paris would have been the most likely or the French highway system - never showed up once). There is also no 3D data for those lovely sort of 3D buildings you get in major NA cities. A tip for anyone using this in Paris - drive slowly, have a good idea of where you are going before you drive, and expect a lot of recalculating - new streets come up very very fast. Its easy to miss those streets. Nuvi does a graceful job of recalculating your trip. One last tip - use google maps to search for your destination, once found use the "Send" function in the map balloon to send that location to your GPS (it works like magic).
The install. Watch out. No it's not a nightmare, but it is not intuitive.
- If you have a low priced Garmin that does have an SD slot - consider buying an inexpensive 1 or 2Gb SD card. Simple enough and will set you back no more than twenty dollars. That will mean you will never run out of storage space for the maps. Performance will be identical to the unit memory or the SD card. So spring for an SD card.
- The current shipping version of this software is City Navigator NT 2010, and yes it is the correct version. The list price on Amazon is different from the list price at Garmin (so you might think this is the wrong software). Amazon offers a really good discount over the Garmin site. Take advantage.
- Install:
- The program on the DVD installs a program called Mapsource on your computer. Once the install has happened, no sofware was put on your Garmin yet.
- The next step is to run MapInstall (you'll have to chase after that in your start menu under Garmin). The first thing it will tell you, Navigator Europe NT is locked. Plug in your GPS and wait until windos says the unit is conencted. Click on the "unlock on line." Your browser should find your GPS. You then enter the serial number from your GPS (it's on the GPS label right in front of you) and the Letter Number code from the back of the DVD package. Then click on Unlock. On the website, you will get a message that the maps are unlocked.
- Next Step is where all h e double hockey sticks can break loose. If you are lucky and Garmin isn't monkeying with their website, the software will unlock and all will be good. Back at MapInstall, click OK, and the software will be unlocked. If you have the bad luck I did, the software will remain locked. One hour on hold and two support people later, the software support person walked me through the MyGarmin Website to find the Unlock Code number. If this happens to you - go to MyGarmin, log in, click on the MyMaps tab. Find your GPS, click on Details. Now a very detailed window will open, and the 25 digit unlock code will be listed for Europe NT. Copy that code into memory. Now run Mapsource, a pop up window will appear indicating that Europe is locked. Click on Skip. Then go to the Utilities menu, click on Manage Maps. Then click on the Unlock Regions tab. Now this is the fun part (not intuitive at all), click on Add, then in the pop up window paste your 25 digit unlock code here (that code is not the product key). Click OK, OK... and voila, your Europe NT map is now unlocked and you can proceed with the next step. Fun eh?
- Now that your Europe map is unlocked - run MapInstall. More than likely you will see a very ugly map of Europe in a square. Just click on the upper left corner outside the square and drag down to the lower right corner to highlight all the region maps available. Make sure your GPS is plugged in your comptuer. Then click to send the maps to the GPS. Depending on your computer the map index build may take a long time or 5 minutes on a very fast quad core. Then the maps will transfer to your GPS, takes about 15 minutes.
- Does all this sound intuitive? No. Not at all. Is it a pain in the rear, yes you betcha. Garmin really needs to improve the whole updating Nuvis. The software they are using is very very old - I used this many years ago to load maps onto an eMap where memory was outrageously expensive and extremely limited (before a trip I could only load the region I was travelling in). With cheap unlimited memory, this should be simpler now.
These maps are beautiful, have great detail, and will get you where you need to go in Europe. If only the install could be more intuitive.
