This (non)downloading business is getting old.

[woodstramp]

The last time I tried downloads (small DOQQ and small USGS) they failed after two attempts. These attempts were in the morning and evening on a weekend day. Had to wait until Monday to call tech support. The tech made it good with a free download certificate. That was good. The failed map finally did load after that call too. Of course this was days after I needed the downloads.

Today I had planned a trip with my elderly father in law to log old family graves and home places on the mountain were he was born. Family tree stuff. I thought that some aerials would help. Particularly the DOQQ stuff. In this application the older BW data is actually a benefit when trying to find "what was there" once. I use it as a time bridge sometimes. Ordered a 28MB DOQQ of the area three hours before we were to leave. Figured that would be plenty of time, even with a download hiccup. Hung up again, and again. Just like a couple of weeks ago.

We go on the ride. I get home after and transfer the stored track and WP's in a new T8 file. Decide to try the DOQQ download again because T8 says it's ready for download. It hangs again where I cannot "cancel" the failed download "opening file" popup box. Had to CTR/ALT/DEL to kill T8 again. Of course all the track/WP data I just transferred was lost. Had to restart T8 and reload and save the track/WP info again.

One of the main draws to the PN's is to utilize the aerial downloads. It's really getting to be a hassle to not be able to use this when you really want to use it. I hope you Delorme folks get this fixed.

[striker3]

I have had my PN for less than a week and have this happen a couple of times as well. It seems to happen only if I check the box to have a PN file made, and the download freezes at the end when the PN file should have been downloaded. When I restart T8, the aerials show on the map view, but they are not in the PN files list. When that happens, I have to download straight from the website provided in the confirmation email. Once the download is complete, I only have to transfer the PM0 file as all the others already exist. I wonder if it would help if the server transferred the T8 files and the PN enabled file in 2 individual downloads?

I have also learned to save any changes to the map I made before I start a download...just in case. But then again, I have had to learn to do that with all the mapping software I have ever used. It sucks to spend 2 hours drawing an overlay only to have the software freeze and have to close it down :/

[woodstramp]

Striker3,

When I talked to the Delorme tech last week about my problemhe told me that they are about to release a new update for Topo8 that will take the kinks out of the downloading problem. He said it would just show up in you T8 downloads in a week or two. Hope it works. We'll see.

[woodstramp]

Well, the new service pack did show up when I opened T8 today. Did an install from the instructions and directly loaded two different USGS seletions. So far, it has worked like a charm. And this was in the middle of the day.

Thank you Delorme!