Rough Draft

StreetPilot 2610

I recently purchased the Garmin StreetPilot 2610 Automotive GPS. I have a rather poor sense of direction so it will be a big help to me in getting around California. Lynn's parents have the same model and it has worked well for them. They travel quite a bit going to contra dances.

So far I am pretty pleased with it. I did successfully use the GPS to take Egon to the vet in Cleveland and to get to Setsuna's BBQ. The one problem is that the software used to transfer maps only runs under Windows. I was able to install the software in Virtual PC, but transferring the maps is incredibly slow and most of the time when I'm trying to transfer maps I get an error message after a while saying the GPS is no longer responding. I was able to get maps of Williamsport and Cleveland transferred before my trip. Those maps totaled about 11 MB and took over an hour to complete the transfer. The longest part is the "building index" phase, which doesn't seem to involve actually transferring any data to the GPS but that's when I usually get the not responding error. I'm now trying to get the maps for the Bay Area onto the GPS and it's about 20 MB, but after many hours of trying I haven't been successful. Has anyone out there used the StreetPilot 2610 or another Garmin GPS with Virtual PC?