Laptops, GPS and mapping software

[h2oeco]

I have been told that I have to let Abana know what I want by September 15th... :-)

[BlueDog]

But, you would not be able to do radar and traffic displays on the navigation system display.

Nothing a little hacking can't fix!

[Brad]

Nothing a little hacking can't fix!

And you, Kind Sir, can stay away from my Subie.

[BlueDog]

Its amazing what a laptop connected to an OBDII port can do!

[billysinc]

For those folks who use Google maps mobile on their smartphone the latest version (5.7.0) allows you to download map data for use when you don't have a data connection.

[mtruman]

For those folks who use Google maps mobile on their smartphone the latest version (5.7.0) allows you to download map data for use when you don't have a data connection.

This is a great feature and it's about time Google maps added it. For hiking with an Android phone I think the best app out there (or at least the best I've tried) is Backcountry Navigator. It has multiple sources for topo maps including MyTopo which have excellent detail and include most of the White Mountain trails. They also support maps cached on the phone and have a much better system than Google for downloading them. You just mark a region on the map and select download. It asks you what zoom levels you want and it then downloads all the selected areas and zooms in the background. Supports all the usual features of using GPX tracks, recording tracks, waypoints, etc. Costs $10 but well worth it. I've used it on the last two hikes in the Whites and am really happy with the performance. Nice thing is that with the cached maps you can put the phone in airplane mode and battery usage is minimal. With my new Droid X2 I easily got in the whole 8 hours on the trail with both GPS use and a few pics with the phone camera and had 40% battery at the end.

Edit: I just looked at the change log for the new Google Maps and see that they've added the ability to download specific map areas (which is what Billy was obviously saying). This is much better than the previous method that tried to figure out what to cache based on where you were most often. I love Google maps on the phone - but still not for hiking...