A question about the newer handhelds

I have an older Garmin Etrex Legend C handheld. Well the thing that has always driven me crazy about it is that I have to download sections of the country on it, and sometimes I go outside of those sections and have no detail on my GPS. My question is with the newer handhelds do they have greater capacity? It seems to me that it should be possible to have good detail on the entire country now instead of sections, considering the advancement of the microchip industry. Am I right and are the current units capable of such detail for a much wider area?

it all depends on the model. the early etrex had 8 megs of internal memory. later models like my vista c have 24 megs of memory. now there are models that use sd cards and you can puts lots of territory on them. it also depends on the level of detail you need. 1:24,000 compared to 1:100,000 for example.

my vista c can hold enough data that there is no way i can walk off the map in a month. but not even close if i want to drive the alcan.

My gpsmap60csx has 2 types of topo maps for all of US. It also has street maps, MTB trail maps, and maps for atv trails. I also store about 10,000 custom waypoints for geocaching. And this gps is about 6 years old. Newer models have amazing features but they don't look and feel as durable. And mine has been run over more than once, and lost in a river. Works great.

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I just picked up an etrex 20 a few weeks ago, it has an SD card expansion slot. Without the SD card I was able to load the southwest beta from Garmin.

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Originally Posted by denaliguide

it also depends on the level of detail you need. 1:24,000 compared to 1:100,000 for example.

my vista c can hold enough data that there is no way i can walk off the map in a month. but not even close if i want to drive the alcan.

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Thanks. I definitely want 1:24,000 for the most part. Well, for my hiking anyway and I think it's a pain to constantly upload different maps...but maybe that's because I don't do it that often so I have to figure it out each time. Now in a little less than two week we're going to be traveling across the country and somewhere in Colorado, I'll no longer have maps on it. That kind of sucks. I'm not in a financial position to upgrade right now. Any suggestions?

www.miscjunk.org/

lots of states at 1:24000 all free and you use mapsource to load what you want into your gps.

Free maps at http://www.gpsfiledepot.com

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I have the Dakota 20 and 60CSX both have sd cards and are great handhelds you won't go wrong with either one both made by Garmin !!!!