OT: Import duties on foreign electronics?

Actually from an economic standpoint most GPS manufacturers use the same EPROM chips. Replacement of the map is often as simple as connecting it to the PC and "updating" ....

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Well the best guys have been trying here and in the UK to do this with the aviation units and have never been able to, even after spending thousands. The manufacturers have made shure of that

Some say they think the base programme has a serial number embedded in in whiich looks for the correct serial on the unit.
But a number of units have more capacity in the International unit, so the USA version cannot hol all the data.

Maybe the cheap ones are easyer ?????

Good luck , keep us informed
 
Here's how to open it up
http://www.lexicon.net/firstwaypoint/assets/etrex%20repair.pdf
 
Surely a yank must be able to bring his unit over to ZA and have a reasonable expectation of being able to load up some ZA maps from a ZA map CD ???

Would be a bit silly if the thing was useless outside of the Americas.

[B)]

Companies that pull shyte like this make my blood boil ...
 
Well our aviation units dont work in the USA. There are a couple guys here that rent out USA versions to guys that are visiting or fetching a plane from the USA. They then use the one unit in the USA and as the cross the atlantic the switch to the other unit.

I have never seen a Etrax Vista USA version switched on here to see what happens, but other units I have seen just give you your GPS coordinates and a blank screen and wont accept Map CD sofware

Try giving Garmin support a e-mail and say you are visiting South Africa will your Vista work with SA Map CD
 
Bloody money hungry hounds!

The map doesn't work in ZA if its from the US, and you have to buy/rent one??? WTF is wrong with these ppl? GPS -GLOBAL positioning system [:p]

My dad has one of these garmin things, it talks to his laptop and he loves it, but he bought it here on special, but as far as i know he takes it round the world on his travels (russia, alaska, africa etc...) will ask him if he has mapping probs, or if he only uses it for co-ords.

Crapstix!

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Also we ( south africa) have to by from Garmin europe

So we pay pounds for our units whitch compounds the problem because the pound is much stronger against us than the dollar

And then our "dealers" add a grond or so onto the price

Have you tried direct from one of the importers ? thelist is under dealers at www.garmin .com
 
Comrade Borris

The data bases for the entire world are very large and expensive. we get them for the fixed aircraft systems but they cost a fortune, even though we get them straight from the states

They try and make the handheld units cheaper and smaller by breaking the world up in 3 parts ( N+S America, europe russia Africa, australia and asia)

If you take a SA aviation unit to the USA it will tell you where you are and how fast ect ect, but it will have no airspace boundry information, frequencies, contacts, navigation instrument information , Airport information ect ect

The vista we are talking about will lose all the special features it has, but could probably be used as a pure coordinates unit, but you can buy that type here for much much less than a Vista
 
OK hArTh

Just got a reply from Garmin ( wow in only 40min from my mail )

They say if I have a USA Vista I can use the latest "GARMIN MapSource® WorldMap CD-ROM" listed at $112 in the USA
And it will give me detail for all major areas in South Africa but I will not have certain basemap features out of major regions.

This cannot be used on older handheld units.
 
Oh , and you can only upload a limited areas information whereas the basemap gives you thousands of square km of information.
 
Or how about this

http://www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk/viewprod.php?product_id=5

Etrax Vista (Atlantic basemap, ie ours ) only 208 Pounds and they ship internationally

Thats only R2,400 at todays rate
 
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