How to get all US or Europe maps on a 1GB SD card

Froglips · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 22, 2004 Posts: 7

I have a TomTom Go bought in the US ($513!). I bought the European map set in London. I bought two 1 GB SD cards.

The entire US map set fits on a 1GB SD card as does the European map set.

The problem is that the TomTom Go does not switch between maps automatically if you load each state individually. If you load a region then the TomTom Go will allow you to set destinations any where in the region you have loaded. However, as soon as you want to leave the region you have to select a new region to continue the trip. You can not navigate a trip from Maine to California because there is not a single load that includes all the intervening states.

I have tried to find a combination of the regional loads that would give you all the US (or Europe) but the combinations that TomTom has created include overlapping states so you load some states twice and the entire US won't fit.

Has anyone figured out what the entire US SD card load sold by TomTom looks like? What a pain in the butt this has been.

Froggie

lbendlin · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:46 am Post subject:

The SD card that comes with the GO (sic) is exactly the same - siz chunks of multi-state maps. For licensing reasons TomTom will continue to force you to switch maps manually. Live with it, or get a different product that uses corridor cutting to ease the licensing pain.

In this price range NO navigation program will EVER allow you to load all of the US onto one card and navigate between all the maps. TeleAtlas/Navteq will simply not permit ithat.

By the way - the TomTom Navigator 2004 has some more map cuts, including "Cities of the USA" - a combination of MRA and the 20 biggest cities. Eases the pain a little bit.
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Lutz

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Sniff · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 9:01 am Post subject:

Is there a map that shows just major cross-country routes? Similar to the Major Roads of Europe map? Use that to navigate from Maine to California, then switch to the state-specific map when you cross the state line.

lbendlin · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 12:52 pm Post subject:

Yes, there are two of them. Major Roads of America (85 MB) and ( included in the TomTOm Navigator 2004 pack) Cities of the USA (203 MB) which is MRA plus the 20 biggest city centres.
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Froglips · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 22, 2004 Posts: 7

Hmmm, so when I load a bunch of the regional (groups of states) maps it takes the same state info but puts them in a folder with a group name. If I create my own folder (named US) and dump all the state files into it then TomTom wouldn't let me turn on the license. It is not clear why this costs TomTom any different amount.

I will try to find an optimal (minimum number) of the regional groups that has a minimum amount of state overlap. There is about 8mb left on the 1gb card after all the US maps are loaded so duplication of some of the smaller maps might be acceptable.

Frustrating to have an "almost perfect" product where one of its defects could be so easily corrected.

Thanks for the replies.
Froggie

lbendlin · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:09 pm Post subject:

Copying all the files into one folder would not work - each map cut comes with a number of files - cline, cnode, etc. You would overwrite these files if you'd put everything into one folder.

Again - this is not a technical limitation of TomTom - this is a wilfull limitation imposed by TeleAtlas. After all the TomTom product and it's equivalences cost about a tenth of the "real" navigation systems (the built-in ones, with one DVD for all of North America). You get what you pay for...
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Lutz

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