Ahto,

Take a look at this: [url=http://tinyurl.com/32nofl]

I get your point, BUT most travellers would get away with none at all. <500k maps are only really needed if you're route-finding in remote areas - typically a small enough proportion of the trip to carry printouts.

Bigger maps you'll want to take on paper anyway.

I spent days setting up a PDA with 200k maps for my last trip, it worked OK although a pain to read in bright sunlight. A custom-printed map book brought by a client with pre-marked waypoints proved much more useful in the end and unlike the PDA no one accidentally wiped it's memory!

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Wales ......
 

We have just returned from some very nice off roading with our local club in Wales. Heading there though I discovered I had forgotten the the instructions to get there, but thought we would be OK as I had them on the laptop, which we were testing out with the GPS.

What we didn't count on was the auxillary battery packing out, which the inverter was wired into. So, just as we realised we only had 15% battery, we realised that we couldn't charge it without a major headache!! This left an interesting last two hours of navigation and battery conservation! We made it, but it certainly taught us a lesson to on how an over realiance on one technology can leave you exposed.

Anyway, this and our experiment with the laptop has left us favoring navigating with our Garmin V, with laptop as backup. A most probably a paper store of maps too.

Thanks for all the advice, I still reserve the right to change my mind several times before the big trip though :)

Ollie,

Your conclusions are basically correct - you can't relay on any piece of technology unless it can be fixed with a big hammer :-). But they need a bit of fine-tuning.

I've been using electronic navigation for many years and can say that in 99 per cent of cases it gets me there and back. The remaining 1 per cent can be made up by using such cheap tricks as asking for directions or using paper maps.

If my past experience is anything to go by, here are some points which I hope someone may find useful:

Rule No 1 - If you want to use any electronic navigation tool, make sure it's right for the job and you have enough practice in using it. Enter coordinates into your GPS using DMS while DMM is needed and you'll know what I mean.

Rule No 2 - If you decide to use it, make sure it works 100% and you know how to fix it if it doesn't. Otherwise you may end up carrying around plenty of dead weight - too expensive to throw away and too knackered to be useful.

Rule No 3 - Use sufficient redundancy built into the system. These days GPS receivers, hard disks, PC computers or power supplies come so cheap you can buy them by the pound. It's better to have two or three cheap spare items than one all-singing-all-dancing ultra expensive Halfords gizmo that can leave you stranded or get stolen.

I'm looking to go down the laptop route for a trip around Morocco in April, having used laptops for offroading in the UK.

A friend has been offered some second hand Panasonic Toughbook CF-28s - the military spec ruggedised ones for around £360 + VAT + Delivery.

These usually sell on ebay for £595 or above so it's a pretty good price.

I need to find 4 other people to fill the minimum order of 5 so if anyone is interested, please drop me a private message via the forum here.

The spec is similar to the spec of this one currently on ebay (see eBay.co.uk: SALE NOW ON! PANASONIC TOUGHBOOK CF-28 LAPTOP (item 230106346763 end time 28-Mar-07 21:45:00 BST)) although it is running Windows 2000 pro, not WinXP.

You can pickup 12volt to laptop (variable voltage) power supplies for not much money nowadays which will be a lot cheaper and more energy efficient way of powering your laptop.

Certainly worth looking out for one.

Interesting thread, but i must say, i'm very confused?? Are you all in the dark ages? Why not get a GPSMAP, like a Garmin 60, load it with Worldmap (if it doesn't already have it), Buy the harness and a cradel, weather it be $30 from RAM, or $120 from Touratech, and your set. You can leave the laptop at home (i'm packing one now, but it's a mac and doesn't comply with Garmin stuff...f#$kers!) Your set! You have a moving realtime map, which is adequate and you can see in the sunlight, and you can relate to your paper map on your tankbag. If you really want, you can load the Wanderlust maps and have complete detail. PDA's, laptops on the dash? Wierd! Seriously, i say this all in jest, but just pay a little more for a GPSMAP and be done with it! Simple! Personally, i recomend the 60cs, or the latest csx. Very durable and weatherproof, and small enough to fit in your pocket so you can find you way home in Bogota in the middle of the night (bad idea actually, just take a cab :) )

The advantage with a laptop or carpc is that you have a decent sized screen that is a lot easier to read when bouncing along a track than the small screen on the Garmin.

You can also store more detailed maps as well as things like Satellite images to backup the maps you have. If you are lucky you can even go to the extent of looking at 3d renders of routes to help you get an idea of the road ahead.

My ideal would be a proper built in CarPC that would also be used for entertainment - virtually all the music I have is on MP3 now.

...fair enough, but truthfully, if you can read your dash guages when your riding down a gravel road, you can read the GPSMAP. Just zoom in on your location so it only covers say 2km. People ask me all the time if i can read my GPS, and the answer is i've never wished for a larger screen. The new 60csx takes cards that you can load before you leave, or at any internet cafe you encounter. I do carry a laptop that i use for camera and video editing, but as someone posted befor, you can't see the screen in the sunlight anyway...the gps you can. The GPS can take a tumble, the computer can't, and you will crash or fall over. Trust me, just try it and you'll be convinced :)

Ollie,

We agree with the replys you got, We have been on 5 pre trips and found the Laptop was a pain, good for internet cafes and writing up diarys and dont forget watching films.

We have finaly gone with the Garmin Nuvi 660 after advise from Tom Bird at Garmin UK, we have used the laptop to create a list of waypoints of places to visit in the european mapping and saved areas of the world map passed Turkey then being able to download the mapping with waypoints to the nuvi as we go along, saves memory in the unit not that we need it with 2 Mb innt the nuvi.

Another good thing with the nuvi is its discreate, bright screen, you can use it on its btys. We have also bought good old paper mapping from Stanfords.

What club did you go to wales with was it Shire as we used to live in Gosport?

But good luck on your trip planning, get away as much as you can for a minimum of 1 week to 10 days at a time, then write a Post exercise report in a log book as you go along full of all the things you need to change sort out.

Check it out!
http://www.gpscentral.ca/products/garmin/nuvi370.htm

Just to end your confusion -- the GPS basemaps available for most of Africa (and probably other less 'mapped' places around the world) are pretty useless. For Africa you need to scan and calibrate your own maps or fork out for a very expensive all-in-one solution like Touratech's. Either way, if you're doing anything half-way serious off the tar, and need to read terrain you'll have to mess around with a PC at some stage in the game - even if only to print out your reliable paper sheets!

Just looked at Morocco on Worldmap v4 (which I've never heard of) on the Garmin website. Detail compared to the IGN or Russian maps is minimal to say the least. Would probably be adequate for navigating town to town but for specific pistes or finding discrete features it's pretty useless.

I'll stick with my original plan of dash mounted gps pre-programmed with routes and a pda to show position on a map. Backed up with paper copies, and if I was doing a west africa circuit or similar, maybe even a used toughbook for comprehensive map and photo storage.

Andrew.

If you get a laptop or a CarPC sunlight on the screen won't be a problem.


Hopefully won't crash or fall over in our LC - don't forget this is a 4WD section ;-)

For me, in a car, a decent laptop setup or CarPC will always win hands down - you can do more with it and see more of the map atr a time on the screen, which is easier to read when driving along.

Yes there are security issues and you need to hide it away when you stop, which you most likely will have to do with the Garmin anyway.

As a portable backup, I have a PDA phone and a bluetooth GPS, running a cut down versions of the mapping software on the laptop.

So much to think about!
 

Wow - thanks for all the naswers and keep them coming.

Now I only want to go and spend £400 on a brand new Garmin GPS .... :)

Its all good fun finding out anyhow, but I do think the number one issue is making sure you have the quality of maps. I may well take you up on your offer for a tutorial for buying maps and converting them to something useful Andrew! (P.S. thanks for the PM).

Andy - yes it was the shire we were out with. Our first time with them and it was a great weekend. A really good way to learn what the vehicle can do. Hopefully we will be out with them again soon. When do you guys leave?

If you had an infinite supply of mpney, does anyone have an opinion on which would be the best electronic maps to buy? I might start begging :)

Thanks again...