BTW, Gadget.. I would love to mass produce them and sell them. I think I sell a lot of them. But I do not personaly have a welder (yet) and I did that at a friends shop.. I have not yet got my garage set up for any heavy metal fab.

Wood working.. I got, minor bodywork.. I got, Engine work...I got, Metal fab... I no got.. someday, someday....

 

I have had a chance now to play with the Nat. Geo. TOPO! product. I got an external USB 2 hard drive and installed the TOPO! software and copied all the CDs to the hardrive so that I wouldn't have to be frequently switching between CDs.

I can place waypoints on the map either by clicking on the map with the Waypoint Tool or by typing in the coordinates in the Waypoint popup screen. I don't know how else you would expect to be able to do it. I can then select waypoints to be added to a Route; I use the left mouse button and shift key to select the waypoints, then the right mouse button to copy and then the right mouse button again to paste them into the Route object. Adding waypoints into a route does have some idiosyncrasies, if you don't do it just right then nothing gets pasted into the Route object. I can then upload both the Route and waypoints into my Garmin Etrex.

Downloading track logs from the Etrex to the Topo! software also works to an extent except that all of the separate track logs that I have saved in the Etrex are downloaded as a single collection of waypoints. By comparison, when I download track logs to the Garmin MapSource software each separate track log is kept separate.

 

I will need to look into that more carefully then when I have time again.

 

Look into it again, and can get tracks from GPS to both Mapsource and N Geo maps. Wypoints and routes as well, but still can't get maps from N Geo to GPS, no chance I think. Can get the Mapsource Topo to GPS which is useful.

Nothing like fiddling with it a bit, when you are on a boring work conference call and doing it from home

 

Sorry to highjack.
Gadget. Jeff at Badland Bumpers took Lee's idea (with Lee's o.k I hope) and started mass producing them.
I purchased mine for $40 local.
http://www.badlandbumpers.com

 

http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2....37&KEYWORD=gps

 

You can get the Garmin Rhino 120 for 208 at amazon.com new.

Has anyone tried linking their laptop to their gps and tried tracking with the laptop? I just got route66 for my laptop $40 at gps4fun.com and find it slow as all hell. It lags like a mofo and I'm not sure why...? I was wondering if it was because of the serial hook up speed. Has anybody else experienced this? It could either be the software or the fact that I'm running a serial to usb connector which requires a software based converter. I'm thinking thats what it is but not sure.