Hi there,

I've been "lurking" around this for the last couple of weeks and have been playing around with all sorts of possibilities. It's taken me a while to get there but theres some learning to do !

I've got both Mapsource, Google Earth and Multi Map, but looking around the groups there appears to be a common theme, but heres some things that I've found out along the way:

GPS
I've got a 60c Garmin which only has 64MB space on it which I used for boating, it appears to fit a lot of Maps in the space required and can be picked up cheaply on ebay or online. The newer ones (cs and csx) accept SD Cards, so if you want to be ultra prepared get an SD card and prepare it all up front. When I'm away I'll take my netbook with me, and will use this to update my GPS and download routes from time to time.

POI
Use Ulrichs POI database, it's growing all the time and looks like is going to be (if not already is) the defacto standard for Overlanding.

Maps
Use the Open Street Map tiles to get the maps that you require, its amazing the quality of these maps, and that they are open source!, All the areas of Africa that I'm intterested are covered:
Worldwide routable Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap

They are also routable (eg from A to B via roads rather than "As the Crow Flies")

There is also the smelly bikers maps as well, although I've not used these ...

Software
Once I've installed the Open Street Maps onto my machine, I use Mapsource and these installed maps from above provide a detailed maps of Africa to what I need. Highly recommended.

Routes
Theres a number of routes kicking around from all different sources. The good books written by Chris Scott for the Sahara and other on the Arctic Highway provide access to some good routes which look fun ! (I've still yet to put this into practice!).

You can also create and amend routes as you go along ...

Enough of my ramblings .. thought I'd give you my findings over the past couple of weeks of looking into this.

PB.