HikeArizona.COM

I have the Garmin eTrex Summit for hiking and the Garmin GPS IIIplus for the motorhome. Am reading Compass & Map Navigator and GPS Made Easy.
What software do I need for hiking?

And, though it ain't hiking, any recommendations for software for the motorhome...something that will get me from Sun City West to just about any address in the US without getting lost?

Hey Hooli,

For hiking I like the TOPO! by Nat'l Geographic. It's super easy to use and you'll have it trading info with your eTrex in seconds. Its also very detailed which is good for hiking.

For the motorhome, the Topo USA would be a far better choice. Covers the entire USA and you can get all the streets and everything. Also has great 3D graphics. I find it frustratingly difficult to use. There was an old thread about how Joe and someone else finally figured out how to connect for GPS down/upload and the process was mind boggling, but I'm sure he could help you. I may be wrong, but it appears to me that Joe has resorted to putting his Topo maps into his 'paint' program and drawing his trails and such with it. That may be the best way to do it.

TOPO! is the only one I've seen that prints the exact same topos that you get
from the map store. Garmin's MapSource and the DeLorme software are
both highly compressed, so the topo lines are just a vague approximation.
If you look closely, you can see rivers winding up the canyon walls, and
steep cliffs that show up as gentle slopes.
I don't find TOPO easy to use, and it didn't work at all until I got updates for
both TOPO! and the eMap from their websites, and I wish it had the neat
3d flyby that DeLorme has, but accuracy is really important for hiking.
The eMap displays topo lines, which I like a lot, and unfortunately they
have to be downloaded from MapSource, otherwise I wouldn't have it.

Thanks, I ordered TOPO and TOPO USA today. Now if I only knew how to read a map

So have you got it yet? I have had it since version 1 came out. By far the best GPS software for AZ

Received TOPO USA, but not TOPO AZ; got a second e-mail from Amazon.com saying shipment will be delayed until around June 5.

A brief ZDNet article on topo software, may be of interest:

Map software: The tech that helps you find yourself
David Coursey,
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories ... 85,00.html

Actually, I had recalled another thead, GPS Reviews-Deals,
http://www.hikearizona.com/haz2/viewtopic.php?t=87

but this one is even closer to the topic of the software review.

Ver 3.3.0 of National Geographic's TOPO is now available on their website:

http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/upgrades.cfm

NOTE: After I installed it I noticed a major discrepancy between the documentation and the software. The documentation refers to Save, Save As, New and Open commands for .tpg files but the only command for them in the product is Merge. I emailed Nat Geo about this and they told me:

"The new upgrade to TOPO! allows you to save .tpg
files as .tpo files to make it less confusing. You can still merge in old
.tpg file but if you save a file in TOPO! now the waypoints will be saved in
the .tpo format."

Bill