I am using Red Pine Mapping companies, PaddleNav on my Garmin GPS and I am only going to Quetico. The map covers all of BWCA and Quetico, would it help speed up the GPS display if I had only the part of the map that covers Quetico? Would it be of any value to use only part of the map and is that even possible?

Did you just download it or did you get the SD cards and are using those?

I downloaded the map and the map is on the built in memory on the Montana 600. However, I can put an SD card in the GPS if that will help. I might be able to re-install the map to an SD in the GPS unit.

You should have 5 installations with your purchase.
Faster unit response is loaded to internal memory as you mentioned. Slower (hardly noticeable)), is loaded onto a chip.
Portage tracks and waypoints on the PaddleNav map are map based and will not impact unit waypoint/track/route maximums.
PaddleNav has a fairly small memory footprint, You should be fine using the whole map and keeping it in internal memory.

One of the best continuous US/Canada mapsets available. Have fun with it!

butthead

Thanks butthead, in BaseCamp, I can set the map to show very little detail or lots of detail. In BaseCamp, the less detail the faster the program works. Does setting the level of detail in BaseCamp affect the level of detail on the GPS unit? And if it does, I assume more detail slows down the GPS response time.
I can check this when I get home and have access to BaseCamp. Right now my GPS is very slow, hopefully I can change this with BaseCamp, if not, maybe I can "reboot" the GPS somehow.

RC, your GPS may seem slow because it is updating it's almanac for current position. New units and those that have moved a few hundred miles may take a bit of time to perform this update on startup.

I've used PaddleNav on and set up on several units from ETrex20's to 64st and Montana 600s, with little perfomance hit. On unit detail depends on zoom level.

butthead