Is it me or is Garmin really this cr*p?

[Lorin]

Bought a Garmin Nuvi 1490. Got Maps for whole of Europe. Got MapSource on PC. All I want to do is plan and look at my route from a hotel in Calais to a set of coordinates in Croatia.

Google maps took me less than a minute - it found the hotel, let me put in all the places I want to pass through, planned the route avoiding toll roads, and allows me to look at any and every section of my route zooming in and out at my leisure.

Tried the same with the Garmin. Tried to plan the route in MapSource. WTF does MapSource even do other than draw useless straight lines between your waypoints? Why doesn't it route using the roads - is there any way I can actually view my route like google maps or get it to do anything remotely common sense?

Had to forgoe any sense of logic in order to then find where the Nuvi stored my waypoints and then you still cant view a *@#~+*%&# map of your route.

Is it me, or is it actually just a bucket of counter-intuitive crud that is really only any good for finding postcodes?

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Bought a Garmin Nuvi 1490 ... really only any good for finding postcodes?

Never owned a modern Garmin PND but if it's anything like a TomTom
then post codes and nearby poi are about all they're good for.

 

[Lorin]

I really am surprised how poor the technology is.

 

[TonyP]

If you search for gmap to god app it will allow you to convert your Google rout to gpx format. You can then import this into mspsource, and then you will have your route.
Not perfect in that you will need to check for re-routed etc, but at least you will have it.

Used this process last few years for planning my bike trips.

Sorry bit hard doing this on a mob phone.

 

[Bat21]

Is it me.....

Yes it is user error

It might be a good idea to learn how to use it before you so freely dis the product