The GPS Times

The new Tracks 4 Africa mapset (v9.05) has been launched and is now available from most dealers. A special limited edition, with both a CD and a “Plug-&-Play” SD/MicroSD memory card, is also being sold by select dealers. Simply pop the memory card into your compatible Garmin GPS unit and off you go. No need for downloading the maps onto a computer first, no unlocking procedures and no need for Garmin’s proprietary MapSource program on your PC.

Tracks 4 Africa has improved their offering and now the whole of Southern Africa is routable. They have also increased the number of POI’s (Points of Interest) to over 73,000.

Our uniquely African GPS maps are routable in most parts of Southern and Eastern Africa and can in fact give you turn-by-turn directions from Cape to Cairo. Do not expect complete wall to wall coverage from our maps. We only map places that are relevant to travellers and we endeavour to construct the safest routable GPS maps in Africa.

We have the most comprehensive and accurate list of protected areas such as nature reserves in Africa and we support the Mapa project in order to keep this resource the most relevant and accurate inventory of conservation areas in Africa.

T4A GPS Maps will take you to the most incredible places on the African continent and we boast a very comprehensive set of tourist destinations. Be it the Ngorongoro Crater or Gorilla trekking in Rwanda or simply a very good restaurant in Cape Town you are after, we have them mapped.

We have an incredibly rich set of points of interest which is absolutely relevant to the independent traveller in Africa. Our maps cover more than 65 000 points of interest ranging from activities, attractions to fuel stops and emergency services. We have accommodation such as hotels, guest lodges, backpackers as well as the most comprehensive listing of camp sites in Africa. For each point of interest we have a little landing page on www.padkos.co.za where people can share photos and details about these places. The maps carry a reference between the POI and its landing page and in return the landing page will take you to where the place is on Google Earth.

Stocks are limited so get yourself a copy of the limited edition Tracks4Africa CD & SD/MicroSD “Plug-&-Play” pack now while stocks last and you won’t be sorry.

Just a quick post to say that I have finally received stock of the new Garmap Africa Series 2009 DVD’s. They came in this afternoon but so far I have not had a chance to even load them onto my PC yet (I have been far too busy getting the product pages up on the shop website and my stock into the system).

I will be playing around with the various maps a bit tomorrow and sometime over the next few days I will put together another another “How to load the new maps” video as well as a more detailed post on the maps themselves. In the meantime here is the link to purchase the Garmap Africa Series 2009 DVD and below are the official release details:

Garmap is pleased to announce the latest set of map updates – Garmap Africa Series 2009.  These map updates are supplied on a double sided DVD – one side being for PC users running Windows 2000, Windows XP or Vista; the other containing a data set for Mac users running OS X 10.4 or later.  The DVD contains data for seven mapping products, these being:

- Southern Africa Streetmaps 2009
- Southern Africa Topo & Rec 2009
- Southern Africa Streetmaps 2009, DEM
- South Africa Waterways 2008, Second Edition
- Garmap Nigeria Streetmaps, Topo & Rec V3
- Garmap Indian Ocean Islands Streetmaps V1
- Garmap East Africa Streetmaps V1

Product Highlights

The Garmap Africa Series 2009 DVD contains the following:

• Coverage for 14 countries
• More than 940 000 Km of road coverage
• Six provinces in South Africa with full coverage
• More than 193 000 Points of Interest (POI’s)
• Additional 10 dams included with SA Waterways 2008, second edition
• Routable roads & tracks for more than 60 game reserves & parks
• Almost 300 Wi-Fi Hotspots in South Africa

GPS models & compatibility
The Garmap Africa series 2009 product set is compatible with all Garmin map-enabled GPS units with a memory capacity of at least 16MB. The functionality is dependant on the GPS device being used and users must note that not all the functions & features described are supported on all models. As an example, DEM (Digital Elevation Model) maps can only be displayed on devices that are DEM capable e.g. Oregon 300, nüvi 860 etc.

All Garmap products are licensed for use with a single Garmin GPS unit only.

Limitations
Auto-routing and Places of Interest (POI) search capability are only available on auto-routing and search-capable Garmin GPS units.

Installation Instructions
Users will require an Internet connection and the DVD to do map upgrades. The DVD has been supplied with an auto-run sequence that will open a web browser and provide step-by-step installation & registration instructions. There are also Installation Instructions printed on the DVD cover.

Free Upgrades
Users who purchased the previous map set, namely Garmap Africa Series 2008 - March edition, or who purchased their Garmin GPS unit on or after 1 April 2008, will be eligible for a free upgrade to the latest version of the equivalent map. If a user does not qualify for a free upgrade, they will have the option of purchasing the selected product unlock key online. The upgrade and online purchase processes are facilitated with the DVD and an Internet connection is required. Using the DVD during upgrade / purchase process will save the downloading of large amounts of data, as all relevant data is contained on the DVD.

Congratulations, you’ve just bought your first Garmin GPS. But what now?

Well here are the first 5 things that we recommend you do as soon as you take your New Garmin GPS out of the box, to ensure that your unit runs smoothly and without hassles.

1. Charge the battery:

With the GPS Street Navigators like the Nuvi and Zumo units, you can either charge the unit using an AC charger (if you have one) or, use a standard USB PC cable to plug the unit into your PC and charge it that way. The charge from the PC is quite a bit slower than that from an AC charger but it works just as well. The unit will go into “mass storage mode” as soon as you plug it into your PC (i.e. a picture of a PC will appear on the screen and you will not be able to do anything on the unit while it is in this mode). The unit will also upload all the necessary drivers to your PC at this time.

For the outdoor handheld GPS units you will have to insert your own AA (penlight) sized batteries. If you are going to be using alkaline batteries, we would recommend using a decent brand (like Duracell) rather than just the cheapest you can find.

2. Get a First Fix:

If your New Garmin GPS unit came with preloaded maps on a memory card, pop the card into the unit, take it outside and switch it on. Make sure that you have a good (unobstructed) view of the sky and don’t move around too much. Allow the unit about 30 minutes to get a decent first satellite fix. This will give it time to download a full set of GPS almanac data which will speed up all subsequent satellite signal searches. After this, it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two at most to get a satellite signal again (usually only around 30 seconds or so). [Read the rest of this entry...]

Apart from the Nuvi 710 and the Nuvi 200W swapping 2nd and 3rd places, there is no change from last months top 5 ranking. The Nuvi 200 and 200W are still selling well, mostly due to heavily discounted prices as stores desperately try and get rid of their old stock.

Despite the similarly aggressive pricing of the Navig8 GPS-580 units, JNC has finally dropped off the list. Not surprising in my opinion, as buyers come to realise that, just as with most other electronic devices, quality is always king. JNC have never quite got a handle on the fact that they should stick to what they do best and leave the GPS market to the GPS specialists.

1 - Garmin Nuvi 200
2 - Garmin Nuvi 710
3 - Garmin Nuvi 200W
4 - Garmin Nuvi 205W
5 - Garmin Nuvi 205
6 - Garmin Nuvi 760
7 - TomTom XL Southern Africa
8 - TomTom One Southern Africa
9 - Garmin Nuvi 215W
10 - Garmin Nuvi 310 - (Unit has been discontinued in SA)

TomTom is now making strong headway with both the XL and the TomTom One showing up in 7th and 8th positions respectively. I suspect that we will be seeing more of TomTom in the coming months as they improve their customer support and expand their product range in SA. [Read the rest of this entry...]

A few changes on this months Top 10 list as TomTom finally make their appearance at number 9 and some of the older Garmin units are discontinued to make way for newer technology.

1 - Garmin Nuvi 200
2 - Garmin Nuvi 200W
3 - Garmin Nuvi 710
4 - Garmin Nuvi 205W
5 - Garmin Nuvi 205
6 - Garmin Nuvi 310 - (Unit has been discontinued in SA)
7 - JNC Navig8 GPS-580
8 - Garmin GPSMAP 60CSX
9 - TomTom XL Southern Africa
10 - Garmin Nuvi 760

Two new Garmin units, the Nuvi 205 and 205W come in to replace the discontinued Nuvi 250W and the much older Garmin Quest units. Although not even close to the equivalent of the Quest units, the “lower end” Nuvis seem to have found quite a large following with those customers who initially purchased a “top end outdoor unit” only to find that they never used half of the features. Now, when it comes time to upgrade their units, they tend to settle for something without all the bells & whistles (and at less than half the price). [Read the rest of this entry...]

This is the first post in this series of “Top 10 GPS units sold in South Africa” posts so please read of the note at the bottom of this post. These lists are simply intended to give you, the reader, a better idea of the GPS market trends in SA. I will also be including my own personal observations and opinions.

Garmin Dominate
As you can see from the list, Garmin are completely dominating the South African market at the moment and for good reason too. Simply put, they have had a physical presence in this country much longer than anyone else, as well as having the largest range of GPS units and accessories on the market. Their Authorised Dealer network is by far the biggest in the country (which also means better service and support).

Over the past 9 years I have personally seen the market change from predominantly Outdoor Handheld type units to the ever more popular Street Navigator units. This is an indication of the huge increase in popularity amongst the city folk who are seeing the time saving and convenience benefits of owning a GPS navigation device. That and the overall decrease in prices of course. [Read the rest of this entry...]

This question has come up quite a few times in conversation recently and I suppose the obvious answer would be that it depends on the price. But, one should also try and find out why the GPS model was discontinued and who discontinued it. In other words, did the manufacturers stop making the unit because they have replaced it with something else or did the local distributors simply stop importing them because they weren’t selling well?

Very often it is simply the local distributor who decides to stop importing a specific GPS model, or even a whole range, due to a variety of factors. For example, a particular GPS model may well be popular in another country but it just does not seem to sell well to the market in your country. Sometimes, and this is also the reason why some models are never imported into South Africa at all, the infrastructure of a particular country might also limit the usage of certain features that are available on a specific model and although model “x” may have more features than model “y“, the only features of both model that are actually usable in that country would be the same ones (i.e. there would be no practical difference between the two GPS models capabilities). It then makes sense to only import/keep importing the GPS model with the cheapest pricing point. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Yes, the Garmin Nuvi 860 with Speech Recognition has finally hit South African shores!

This really is a very nice looking unit but I don’t want to delve too much into the aesthetics or even the standard functionality of this unit in this post. The Nuvi 860 is obviously a top of the range unit similar to the Garmin Nuvi 760 and as such has all the usual bells and whistles of the other Nuvi’s in its class. What does make the Nuvi 860 truly unique however, is the speech recognition capability.

Since being able to “speak” to the device and give it voice commands is this units’ biggest selling point, I would like to concentrate on this particular feature. As with all highly advanced technology, there are often features or functions that depend on a variety of factors to work correctly (or even to work at all). We have often seen devices released in South Africa where, due to a lack of infrastructure, available mapsets, radio frequency licensing problems and other issues outside of our control, some of the features were unavailable or were severely limited. We are also warned on the Nuvi 860 Product Presentation and in the Product Description that “some speech recognition functionality is dependent on the capabilities of the mapping in use“.

So, what works on the Nuvi 860 in South Africa and how well does it work?
These are the menu, screen selections and features that are accessible via voice command. [Read the rest of this entry...]

It always amuses me when people get all excited by the Text-to-Speech functionality on some of our GPS units. Being a South African I am quite used to the sometimes odd (mis)pronunciation of some of our road names (especially some of the newer names) by many of our own citizens but believe me when I say that the Brits, Yanks and Aussies are ten times worse.

Take any of the Garmin Nuvi units with the Text-to-Speech feature for example. The voice directions for turning off Lynnwood Road onto the N1 freeway-South (the Danie Joubert freeway) would give you:

• “Turn left on ramp to daynee jew-bert freeway-N-one” when using the British English voice and
• “Turn left on ramp to daynee jobbert freeway-N-one” when using the American or Australian English voices.

Now I don’t know about you but I can only take so many “mangled” street names before I want to throw the witch out of the window. And this is only with the Afrikaans street names, you should hear what they do with some of our more “ethnic” names. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I have been chatting to quite a few people lately about the eagerly awaited 3G iPhone which is soon to be released in South Africa (if you haven’t heard about it yet, you must be hiding under a seriously large rock my friend). One of the topics being hotly debated (apart from the obvious pricing issue of course) is that of the A-GPS (assisted GPS) navigation functionality on the new iPhone.

Touted as the latest in GPS technology, A-GPS is quite simply the addition of cellphone tower and Wi-Fi hotspot triangulation calculations, to the standard GPS signal. Whilst this is not really new technology, it is a first for it to be included in a device like this in this country. There is, of course, no information on this particular feature of the phone on the Vodacom.co.za website (where you can pre-order the iPhone in South Africa) and I have my reservations about the relevance of the information, as provided on the Apple.com website, regarding the 3G iPhone’s GPS navigation functionality for South African users. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Most of the email that I receive is from people asking the same questions over and over again and, a lot of the time, those queries are concerning basic information that is not adequately covered in the unit manual. Or, if it is covered, is explained in such a technical/convoluted way as to make even my eyes water (I mean really, do the people who create these manuals think that we all have post graduate degree’s in physics or something?). Anyway, I thought I’d start a series of shorter “Tips and Tricks” type of posts to try and demystify these wonderful gadgets of ours. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I have recently noticed an overwhelming number of people coming to this blog who are searching for information on the  Garmin Nuvi 200 units (or 2xx series which, in South Africa, includes the 200, 200W, 200 Pink and the 250W). Searches are being done for everything from map updates, firmware updates, settings, how to use the units, loading POI’s and speed traps on to the units all the way down to the occasional person with a problem with a Nuvi 2xx series unit.

I have therefore decide to run a series of (short) posts covering specifically the Nuvi 200 units. In this first post I would like to talk about the Nuvi 200 update process (which is something that I have previously written about but, since the information is continually changing, this post can be regarded as an update to my earlier post).

Generally, the Garmin Nuvi update process is very simple and at the moment (remember that this could change again at any time), Garmin have decided to only use one method of updating the firmware on the Nuvi 2xx series units and that is by using the WebUpdater program.

All other Garmin units, including the rest of the Nuvi range, can either be updated by using the WebUpdater option or by manually downloading the update file from the “Updates and Downloads” section on the Garmin.com website. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I often get asked what the difference is between an electronic map, usually loaded onto a PC, laptop or PDA; and a GPS map which is typically used on, or in conjunction with, a GPS receiver. Most people seem to think that they are one and the same thing and are also usually shocked when they learn of the price difference between the two. Here then is my (rather simplistic) explanation…

Electronic Map

This is simply an electronic version of a paper map with varying degrees of complexity, from a basic static image (which, when zoomed in, shows the same level of detail - just in a bigger size), to a map consisting of multiple overlaid images showing different levels of detail at different zoom levels. A basic electronic map can even be scanned from a paper map and then “geo-corrected” (a process of accurately fixing a coordinate grid to the electronic map). [Read the rest of this entry...]

How do I update the Southern Africa maps on my Garmin GPS unit?

If you want to update your present Southern Africa maps on your Garmin unit or, you already have the latest maps on your unit but would like them loaded onto your PC as well, please read the info below before watching the video.

First of all, you need to get your hands on the latest Garmap Africa Series 2008 DVD. Then please take note of the following:

• Depending on your present mapset, you will be charged an unlocking fee when loading and unlocking the maps on your PC - Note: if you purchased your unit after the 1st January 2008 or you already have the latest maps (i.e. 2008) on your unit and simply want to load them to your PC, then this unlock is Free. For more info on the various unlocking fees please go to this page and then click on the “Unlock Code Pricing” link for each individual mapset listed on the DVD.
• When you load and unlock the maps onto your PC, you will be transferring your map license from your preloaded memory card to your PC (this is known as changing from a “Plug & Play” user to a “MapSource” or PC user). This process will also invalidate the preloaded maps on your SD card so, once you have completed this process you must either upload the maps from your PC on to the internal memory of your unit and format the SD card, or upload the maps from your PC back onto the card (thus overwriting the invalidated maps). This process is explained in the video.
• You can load your unlocked and registered maps onto as many PC’s or laptops as you want, but the process in the video must be followed every time (there is a slightly shorter way of doing this for the more “PC literate” amongst us but this will be covered in separate video a bit later on).

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Well what can I say, first the Garmin Nuvi 710 was on promotion at Gismap GPS Shop for a mere R 5,699 with a small extra or two thrown in for good measure. Now, thanks to Garmin SA who have really came to the table and slashed their prices on the most popular units in SA at the moment, the price has fallen through the floorboards to an incredibly low special offer of only… … … R 4,496 (Incl.VAT).

Nobody knows how long this special will last but with a battling R/$ exchange rate (and a new pricelist to be effective as from April 2008 with strong rumours of price increases), we don’t think this special offer will last for too long. I would strongly suggest getting yourself over to Gismap GPS Shop and placing your order as soon as possible.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

A common question asked by all Garmin owners is “How do I update my GPS unit?”

Well, first of all we need to remember that there are two parts to any GPS. The GPS unit itself and the operating system of that unit, also called the firmware (in the USA this is also called the ‘unit software’), and then there is the detailed map software that is loaded either onto the unit or onto a memory card inserted into the unit. [Read the rest of this entry...]

It has now been confirmed by the Garmin SA technical folk, that recent changes to the Garmin WebUpdater program has made the program safe to use for South African Garmin Nuvi owners.

[WebUpdater: WebUpdater is a free application that lets you update your GPS unit operating system from home. Download it on to your PC once, and then you can check for and install software updates without using your Internet web browser. Simply connect your Garmin unit to your PC, run the WebUpdater from your computer, and it will do all of the work for you.] [Read the rest of this entry...]

Okay, so I have now made, what some people have described as, the worst business decision of my career. I have changed the way that my company handles our customer and tech support services. We have gone from providing a free Garmin support service to all and sundry, to now only providing the Free service for our own customers. And we have implemented a Paid service for everyone else. Oh, Shock and Horror… [Read the rest of this entry...]

Damn, this thing takes a long time to acquire satellites when you start it up from a new destination – and that’s the only complaint I have about this unit!

The Garmin Nuvi 200 - Ready to use straight out of the box with a plug-in map chip, there’s not much more you could ask for in an entry-level unit. In fact, I would be quite happy with this unit all the way past intermediate level! Unless you really wanted some fancy extras, this is all you’re ever gonna need.

The power button slides across the top of the unit. You need to slide and release for it to turn on or off. Of course, it took a couple of goes, with me switching it on, then off, then on again while I worked out that it doesn’t slide and stay! No, I’m not blonde, don’t be rude! As mentioned, it can take a while to find its position, but the signal is very strong and even indoors it seems to have no trouble finding satellites.

Simplicity seems to be the manufacturing goal here and this receiver is small, lightweight, and very basic. There’s a power/USB jack, the card slot for the map SD – and nothing else. No movable parts to break, no odd “holes” that need to be identified, no extras to confuse you. I really liked the straightforwardness of it all. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Here’s another video, this time showing some of the differences between the Garmin City Navigator SA v6 maps and our own, locally produced, Garmap Southern Africa Streetmaps v1.5

I get asked at least once a day why we (South Africans), don’t sell the Garmin City Navigator SA maps in our own country (‘detailed’ maps of South Africa produced by an American company? …. hmmmm, I wonder why not?). I am also often asked whether the Garmin version 6 maps not more recent/updated than the version 1.5 maps from Garmap? Another question is, are the Garmap maps legal and will they work on my “xyz” Garmin unit? [Read the rest of this entry...]