We were given a Magellan Sportrak gps by my stepfather. He had a hard time making it useful for himself, mainly because of the menu system and the innate lack of functionality of the device for your average guy. It is about 3 or 4 years old and noticably dated. No SD card and only about 4 meg of memory onboard to upload maps to. He bought a new gps that should be easier to use and enjoy, and gave me his old one.
Of course I was very excited about this, I had been wanting one for quite a while but really had been put off by the cost to get something that was basically locked up by the companies making them. It sure seemed like they were preying on their customers by reducing the functionality of the devices in order to offer basically the same unit with the extra features for extra money, features that I thought should be in the basic units and for all practical purposes cost the makers little or nothing more, yet were cunningly held back for the sole purpose of squeezing more coin from their "Marks". When the features or functionality did reasonably cost more they appeared to gouging their customers where they could. The situation seems to have changed a bit. I think it is the competition that is out there now.
You are probably thinking, "if you think is sucks so much, you don't have to use one"
EXACTLY, and so I didn't for quite a while! Until I go a free one! I will point out that where there used to be just a couple big names, there are many now. Big names that are still big, but probably would have locked out much of the competition if they had not been so blatant with their contempt for their customers.
One example is that the software that they charge another $100 for is copy protected by not allowing you to run the program without having the data cd in the drive, and by licensing that does not allow you to backup the cds (as well as actually not allowing you to copy it). (also you have to buy the cable to connect your gps to your computer separately for $15 to $30 more)
(Or make one like this guy)
Tough luck if you want to have the software on you laptop and it has a external cd rom drive that you don't want to lug around.
Anyway enough of that for now.
I decided that I would never buy Magellan software or products until they shaped up with this lousy attitude. Fortunately there is a bunch of competition eating into their butts. Also I can go to competing software products, which brings us to:
Freeware?
There is freeware that will work with the Magellan but the two I have seen look like they are limited teasers for their for purchase only versions.
I have not tried them yet.
EasyGPS is touted as for geocachers etc, it is the freeware version for ExpertGPS
http://www.easygps.com/resources.asp
ExpertGPS, $59
http://www.expertgps.com/download.asp
GPS Utility from the UK, freeware with $55 registration fee to make the shareware version that gives much more functionality and usefulness.
http://www.gpsu.co.uk/
FOLLOWUP
Tried EasyGPS and it locks up on my computer. GPS Utility, will download the waypoints, and tracks. I was able to view the tracks and waypoints but didn't go much further. It is supposed to be able to import scanned images of maps, and scale them. That sounds neat but I didn't have a whole lot of time with it.
Make a GPS serial to PC cable
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