This is a cross-post from the GPS forum. I got no response there, and this is directly linked to the 8800. Tahnks for your understanding.

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Hi:

Did not see a post directly on this topic, though Stinsondog seems to allude to it. We all know that loading maps live over EDGE is still pretty painful - like it is on GPRS. Does anyone know if there is any discussion about pre-loading geographic area maps/data onto microSD cards? I would think it would be possible to pre-load maps and points of interest for specific geo areas onto the SD card and that would speed up map loading quite a bit.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

I have answered this before. The new SPOT coming out has the ability to save Waypoints and load them from the card, and portions of the map. I have not tried it yet. I can tell you I think SPOT has huge issues getting maps as they are using WMS maps - free servers. You won't be able to use this as a driving program. More for Geocaching and I don't mean POI's like gas, dining etc . Now TomTom or Garmin might come up with something as more Pearl devices make it into the wild. Nothing else I am aware of right now.

By the way I disagree that map loading is slow. I have never had Telenav choke on me. BBMaps is slow at first due to the scalable vector maps ,but then it zooms much quicker.

I'd be interested in knowing the battery life expectancy with using BB Maps and the 8800 GPS receiver both in real-time downloaded maps and also from stored map information on a SD card.

I think a car charger will be imperative for the 8800....

The new battery is larger. I can tell you that I did a drive from San Diego to LA using both the phone and GPS. Battery was hit hard but did well. Yes have a car charger handy.

Has anyone tried to use the 8800 as a bluetooth GPS puck for a laptop?

There's plenty of discussion. What's missing is a company that has released a GPS app that supports this.

Stinson - you already have the '88 man???