Garmin City Navigator Europe NT for Detailed Maps of Eastern and Western Europe DVD

September 27, 2009 by
Filed under Electronics

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Works well, but be careful you get what you need
I purchased these maps for a driving trip through Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy. On the whole the maps themselves were excellent, finding the smallest roads, alleys etc. I purchased the CD as opposed to the SD card after reading reviews stating the card cannot be updated and some route planning software had to be purchased separately that was on the CD.

Here’s where I got into trouble, As many reviewers stated assembling and downloading the regions to your unit is not very intuitive and pretty cumbersome (I’m trying not to stay stupid). Being that I had an extra 1 gig SD card around I only wanted to download the portions of Europe I needed. I made a route for my trip and made waypoints (hotels airports, sites I wanted to see etc) I zoomed in on the area of Europe for my trip. I highlighted all the oddly shaped regions that crossed borders, included portions of the Mediterranean etc, and downloaded them to my GPS. I cross checked the whole thing once downloaded. I simulated take me from point A to point B on my trip. GPS said calculating and let’s go. Wonderful I thought that wasn’t bad at all.

Upon arrival all worked well until I entered Zurich and Milan. As I approached, detail would start to disappear, and then side roads, then the representation of the car on the GPS would be in a void next to the one or two roads still on the screen that didn’t seem to really exist. The GPS would keep repeating “Drive to highlighted route”. This happened to me both times we were in Zurich and Milan. We finally had to resort to good old maps. After leaving the area the GPS would slowly regain its brain.

Back in the US I called Garmin tech support. They told me that they had never heard of anything like it and offered to replace my unit. After much trial and error, back home I figured it out. When I selected the regions I was going to, my zoom level on the map was to low and the tiny tiny city regions of Zurich and Milan could not be seen and I could not tell they were not highlighted. They appeared to be part of the much bigger geographical regions surrounding them.

I know technically this was my doing, but who would have thought I need to select the black dots that were Zurich and Milan. With all this being said, My GPS never gave me an error stating part of my route was missing I was driving through, during creation or during the actual driving. It just said calculating 100 % and GO. No errors, it just started to loose its mind like the HAL9000 computer when Dave Poole started pulling out the memory ( Daisy Daisy how does your garden grooooooowwwwwwww………)

Moral of story buy a 2 gig card and download the whole thing or zoom way in and be very careful. I’m sure there are still a few, always in a bad temper European drivers, thinking, “What was that idiot in that Peugeot doing” Thank You for that Garmin.

4 Stars Garmin western europe maps helped sometimes
I used the latest Garmin City Navigator for Europe NT. There were pockets of data not availible in eastern France, Luxemburg and Germany around Vianden to St Goar. Otherwise, it helped us navigate sufficiently. JB

3 Stars Better than old school maps but putzy
I purchased Garmin City Navigator Europe NT for a recent trip to the UK and France. It was as all Garmin disks somewhat a pain to load and unlock. Once on my computer, it was another project to transfer data to my GPS. This software has so many layers (a strength AND weakness) that loads of useless information can make a tiny GPS screen overwhelmed by “Points of Interest” of all kinds. I must have inadvertently checked (or it was defaulted) routing to avoid toll roads, the fastest way to get around in France. This left us on some wild backroad adventuring thru the countryside of Normandy. All in all, travelling in a country where ones grasp of the native language is limited (me-French), it was an invaluable tool.

2 Stars difficult to install
The CN Europe NT maps for Europe are a surprisingly difficult installation. The documentation is confusing and poorly written. The process requires that you find and enter a number of codes (product code, serial number, unlock code, unit code, etc.) without suggesting where you might find them or what they might look like. All this is required so that you can then struggle with unfamiliar software for uploading sections of maps.

I expected this to be like the relatively hassle-free North American map update. That one is straightforward and uploads the entire NA map in one action. Of course, until I get to Europe, there is no way to tell if I have uploaded the maps I need and whether the auto-routing feature will work.

This is not an Amazon problem, it is Garmin’s “not user friendly” design that is at fault.

5 Stars The Best Maps – but the install, could they make it more difficult
The reason you are thinking of this product is a trip to Europe. You purchased a Garmin GPS with only the NA maps on it. And now you want to navigate Europe during your next vacation. Well, this is the exactly right software to buy. The detail Garmin gives for Europe is absolutely stunning. In major cities every single street in existence is here. The maps will get you where you need to go, even those hidden treasures. Remember, European cities don’t change all that much over the years. It’s the highways leading in and out that change – but that little bistro in Paris, the great pasta in Rome, the awesome reindeer in Stockholm, that pub you love in London – they haven’t moved for years, their address is still the same. So yes, go ahead and buy this software. It’s expensive, obscenely expensive – but you will never get lost.

August 2, 2009 Update: Lane Assistance DOES NOT work with this map set. I have this loaded on a Garmin Nuvi 765T which does lane assistance in NA. During this trip to France, nowhere did lane assistance appear (Paris would have been the most likely or the French highway system – never showed up once). There is also no 3D data for those lovely sort of 3D buildings you get in major NA cities. A tip for anyone using this in Paris – drive slowly, have a good idea of where you are going before you drive, and expect a lot of recalculating – new streets come up very very fast. Its easy to miss those streets. Nuvi does a graceful job of recalculating your trip. One last tip – use google maps to search for your destination, once found use the “Send” function in the map balloon to send that location to your GPS (it works like magic).

Oh but the install. Watch out. No it’s not a nightmare, but it is not intuitive.

1) If you have a low priced Garmin that does have an SD slot – consider buying an inexpensive 1 or 2Gb SD card. Simple enough and will set you back no more than twenty dollars. That will mean you will never run out of storage space for the maps. Performance will be identical to the unit memory or the SD card. So spring for an SD card.

2) The current shipping version of this software is City Navigator NT 2010, and yes it is the correct version. The list price on Amazon is different from the list price at Garmin (so you might think this is the wrong software). Amazon offers a really good discount over the Garmin site. Take advantage.

3)Install:

a)The program on the DVD installs a program called Mapsource on your computer. Once the install has happened, no sofware was put on your Garmin yet.

b)The next step is to run MapInstall (you’ll have to chase after that in your start menu under Garmin). The first thing it will tell you, Navigator Europe NT is locked. Plug in your GPS and wait until windos says the unit is conencted. Click on the “unlock on line.” Your browser should find your GPS. You then enter the serial number from your GPS (it’s on the GPS label right in front of you) and the Letter Number code from the back of the DVD package. Then click on Unlock. On the website, you will get a message that the maps are unlocked.

c) Next Step is where all h e double hockey sticks can break loose. If you are lucky and Garmin isn’t monkeying with their website, the software will unlock and all will be good. Back at MapInstall, click OK, and the software will be unlocked. If you have the bad luck I did, the software will remain locked. One hour on hold and two support people later, the software support person walked me through the MyGarmin Website to find the Unlock Code number. If this happens to you – go to MyGarmin, log in, click on the MyMaps tab. Find your GPS, click on Details. Now a very detailed window will open, and the 25 digit unlock code will be listed for Europe NT. Copy that code into memory. Now run Mapsource, a pop up window will appear indicating that Europe is locked. Click on Skip. Then go to the Utilities menu, click on Manage Maps. Then click on the Unlock Regions tab. Now this is the fun part (not intuitive at all), click on Add, then in the pop up window paste your 25 digit unlock code here (that code is not the product key). Click OK, OK… and voila, your Europe NT map is now unlocked and you can proceed with the next step. Fun eh?

d) Now that your Europe map is unlocked – run MapInstall. More than likely you will see a very ugly map of Europe in a square. Just click on the upper left corner outside the square and drag down to the lower right corner to highlight all the region maps available. Make sure your GPS is plugged in your comptuer. Then click to send the maps to the GPS. Depending on your computer the map index build may take a long time or 5 minutes on a very fast quad core. Then the maps will transfer to your GPS, takes about 15 minutes.

Does all this sound intuitive? No. Not at all. Is it a pain in the rear, yes you betcha. Garmin really needs to improve the whole updating Nuvis. The software they are using is very very old – I used this many years ago to load maps onto an eMap where memory was outrageously expensive and extremely limited (before a trip I could only load the region I was travelling in). With cheap unlimited memory, this should be simpler now.

These maps are beautiful, have great detail, and will get you where you need to go in Europe. If only the install could be more intuitive.

Oh, now that you own this software, you’ll probably also want to buy the NuMaps Lifetime for Europe and North America (this is lifetime of the device updates to the maps). If you already own NuMaps NA (Garmin n

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