Garmin MapSource and MacBook Pro

[Gilla]

Alright so I got a Garmin etrex Vista C about 3 years ago. I use the thing religiously and am incredibly happy with it (saved my ass on several occasions). Up until now I have been lugging my laptop (PC) from 4 years ago around with me because I can't get MapSource to load on my Mac. The thing is a piece of crap and the sole reason for me lugging it around is for MapSource and all of my GPS data located on the HD.

I went to a Garmin shop in Chicago almost a year and a half ago and the sales people told me there were coming out with some support for Macs. Problem is, I can't seem to find any way to load MapSource onto my Mac without running it in dual boot or some other parallel program. The only thing I can find from Garmin is a web updater.

Is there anyways I can view topo's and data from my GPS on my Mac?? I have heard that you can get your GPS to hook up with Google Earth so I have been looking into that a little. Any other programs I can run to load more detailed topos onto my GPS? Any help would be greatly appreciated...

GPS - Garmin etrex Vista C with no removable memory (64MB I think)
Comp - MacBook Pro w/ the intel and the newest OS

[snoboy]

Try some searching here: http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showforum=11

AFAIK, you are SOL for now.

[trainnvain]

National Geo's TOPO.

[dirtybryan]

Any reason you are against dual booting or virtualization options? Parallels is very solid.

[bio-smear]

I too have been waiting for the Mac Mapsource to come out, but for now I just run a Windows XP virtual machine in VMWare Fusion. It works great.

[Gilla]

Nothing against them, just like to keep things nice and simple. I don't really know much about parallels, maybe I will DL and then dick around with it some. Am I going to have to buy/pirate windows as well??

Edit:

Gotta admit that I also have a bias towards Microsoft products. The only programs/instances of programs failing or freezing I have ever had on my Mac have been when running MS software. Just get frustrated basically so I try to keep as much MS stuff off of my comp as possible.

[bio-smear]

Gotta admit that I also have a bias towards Microsoft products.

Don't we all... but unless you can get an app to display the Mapsource topo CD's you're fucked until native Mapsource comes out.

[dirtybryan]

There are a few options out there. I've used parallels and I think it really is fucking cool piece of software. You can get the virtualization of windows to see your mac as a networked computer and vice versa which really helps eliminate NTFS and HSF+ filesystem headaches. There is an open source alternative floating around, but I can't recall what it is called.

[Gilla]

FKNA, so if i run windows in parallel means i gotta buy/dl dualboot and then buy/dl/install windows? How much memory does this take up? Could I run the windows platform from a external HD to save space on my comp?

[Arty50]

http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/01/15/garmin.gps.software.update/

http://macgpspro.com/html/newhtml/macgpspro/features.html