I've been a loyal user of Garmins since before Clinton discontinued the GPS system "selective availability" in May 2000. Have had 6 or 7 sucessive Garmin models, all of which were $hundreds. Their CS and their software sucks. It has always been inconvenient to workaround their bugs and update maps - while I am not paid to work their issues, or report their bugs I find. Clearly they view their customers as beta testers. Their programmers either are clueless - don't follow programming industry norms / standards - are prima donnas or just don't GAF. Maybe they are focussing on their Big Money platforms for aircraft and yachts. They certainly have left me feeling like the red headed stepchild. I do know a few things about software, as a past programmer, analyst, DBA and Sr support engineer for AT&T and Sybase. But I'm not the Lone Ranger, lots of tech gurus here. They used to have a user friendly mapping program called Mapsource which they EOL'd, broke and replaced with an abomination they call Basecamp. Now after a few years apparently one can get Mapsource to sort of work. I poked around with it a little but my jury is still out on that.
Now the latest aggravation is, they have declared some "Lifetime Maps" models including my 665 ZUMO, their life is "over". I paid hundreds for my 665LM ZUMO - the LM means "Lifetime Maps" - I paid Shortronics at
https://www.palmdr.com/ to upgrade the memory on my 665 as Garmin has been growing the map database to larger than the memory size they allocated in it. They couldn't have anticipated that? That's either incompetence or planned obsolesence to force you to buy their latest - of course with $$$$ up. Certainly malfeasance. Now my 665 has 16GB memory, plenty to absorb Garmin's DB size balloonage as their current 2024.20 DB for all of N America is about 3.5GB. And I added (some time ago) a 32GB micro-SD card. So now they have ended support and block downloading of map updates for these models. The maps are locked and assigned to the specific GPS you downloaded it on - no using the same map from your other Garmin which hasn't been locked out yet. They also use different dB's, different map names and map protocols to complicate hacking the names and the like to transfer maps. (I used to do some hacking on the side, had the skills to disassemble the code and bypass the locks. But now it's been awhile, I'm rusty and besides, I shouldn't have to do that. I have no issue with using such software if I find it since Garmin is unethical - an a-hole company.) Using "Garmin Express" I can't get the latest map update. Though I can for my wife's much cheaper Nuvi 1300 as they provided bigger internal memory as well as support using maps installed on the external SD card. BTW all of my Garmin GPS's for the last dozen years or so have included lifetime maps - so I already OWN the maps they aren't delivering.
I'm looking for workarounds to defeat Garmin's blocking my map downloads, on support sites online. Chris Short at Shortronics has been really helpful - a great place to get your GPS and other stuff repaired & upgraded - he loaded the latest maps on my 665 when he upgraded it - and also fixed the battery problem & internal speaker. But I don't want to have to send it off to him to get the latest maps. I did send him a query on this - he's out of the shop for a while yet.
Got any tech tips on tricking Garmin Express to load my maps?
BTW Here's Garmin's BS redefinition of "Lifetime". By their definition my 665 is still covered for map updates. From
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/lmdisclaimer/Lifetime Maps Terms & Conditions
If you purchase a nüMaps Lifetime subscription (sold separately) or if your Garmin product comes bundled with a nüMaps Lifetime or other lifetime map subscription, you will receive map data updates when and as such updates are made available on Garmin.com during the useful life of 1 compatible Garmin product or as long as Garmin receives map data from a third party supplier, whichever is shorter. A product’s “useful life” means the period during which the product (a) has sufficient memory capacity and other required technical capabilities to utilize current map data and (b) is capable of operating as intended without major repairs. A product will be deemed to be out of service and its useful life to be ended if no updates have been downloaded for such product for a period of 24 months or more. Unless otherwise stated, the updates you receive under the subscription will be updates to the same geographic area included with your Garmin product when originally purchased. In some instances, your Garmin product might not have sufficient memory remaining for you to load an update to the map data, in which case you will need to either (a) select reduced map data coverage for your updates, or (b) purchase separately a microSD™/SD™ card (if and as applicable to your Garmin product) and load all or a portion of the map data coverage for your updates to the card and insert the card into the microSD/SD card slot contained in your Garmin product. If neither of the measures in (a) or (b) can be used to address your product’s lack of sufficient remaining memory, then Garmin may conclude that the “useful life” of your product has expired. Garmin may terminate your nüMaps Lifetime or other lifetime map subscription at any time if you violate any of the terms of this agreement or your subscription. Your nüMaps Lifetime subscription or other lifetime map subscription may not be transferred to another person or another Garmin product.
