I've been using BaseCamp for over 6 years and still can not get happy with it.
Many people have migrated to cellphone / cellular based mapping applications but I spend much of my time in areas where there is no cellphone coverage and need a full feature local topographic mapping application. I'm sure many other people are in the same boat. Before Garmin purchased Delormie that (TOPO USA) was my preferred product. It is intuitive, fast, renders the map data clearly and still has roads and features that are not included in the latest Topo USA V5.01 (it, of course, is over 8 years out of date so does not have any new features).
I have owned Garmin GPS products since the GPS II (1997), they are the best GPS product on the market. They purchased DeLormie (which had the best mapping product at the time). Why do we have to suffer with BaseCamp. It is slow, very difficult to read when zoomed out, completely non-intuitive, and incomplete compared to the older DeLormie data set.
I only write this after having used my ancient DeLormie software (a pleasure to use and pleasing to the eye) but with out of date roads and features then moving to BaseCamp with more up to date information but a royal pain to use and difficult to view (even on my 21" screen). I spent an hour searching for a better product. There are some nice free downloads of topo data but the support software all seems to be a work in progress. BaseCamp still seems the least bad but that is faint praise for a company that has so many other stellar products.
Garmin has the data and the skills. I would be happy to buy new stand alone (no cellular connection required) topographic mapping software that was a superset of Delormie and BaseCamp.
Please do a real BaseCamp update.
Thanx
Ron
FYI DeLormie is also the original developer of the InReach suite of products.
