Walking Forum
Main Boards => Gear => Topic started by: Mark101 on 11:05:13, 02/12/19
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Has anyone else signed up for the OS maps app deal over the Back Friday weekend?
Seemed too good to be true, at 23.99GBP for 12 months access on my laptop and phone. Logged in on my mobile on a short mountain walk yesterday and immediately felt the benefit, being able to walk the length of an ancient entrenchment, the dip into the valley and take a break at a mountain spring.
Seems I could have recorded my walk, or even planned one on my laptop beforehand and used my phone to alert me if I was off course. All in all, a seemingly excellent tool.
Any others use it? (apologies if this has already been done to death).
Mark
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Full price for full OS subscription on up to 4 devices in Viewranger was only one pound p. a. more at full price.
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I intermittently make this point but there seems surprisingly little interest. However, Maverick is a mapping app for Android devices that provides free offline access to OS mapping, once a given area has been viewed at the desired scale online. You can record your route too, if you like that sort of thing, as a gpx file, which you could then view for free on a PC using, say, the WalkLakes site...
Maybe no-one else is quite such a cheapskate as me!
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Full price for full OS subscription on up to 4 devices in Viewranger was only one pound p. a. more at full price.
ey?
Im a skinflint too.! Did I just read you can get OS on viewranger for a £1 per annum???
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I think I might be? I work on the principle that capitalism is my mortal enemy and I try as best I can to live my life to the full but at the cheapest possible cost, meaning as far as possible, FREE!
Which is why I buy my mobile phones for cash and will only by one with two SIM cards. SIM 1 is my PAYE phone, SIM 2 is purely for the internet. Sim 1 only expects money from me when my '£10' has been used, SIM 2 runs out every 30 days. On my old phone (one SIM only) my combined phone money and internet money ran out on me every 30 days. Which is why my wife and I downsized from a 4 bed house to a 2 bed one 30 plus years ago, I just couldn't continue to pay for space that I didn't need!
I'm not a person who thinks a good service is worth paying for, all I want is for 'it' to work. So, for example, my broadband has cost me £19.95 for the past two years but my neighbour is paying for the same thing at nearly £30 a month. I change my energy supplier every 12 months and I change my car insurance every 12 months unless the companies still keep to the same price or within £5 of it. I always buy cheap tyres for my car, (my present front tyres have now done 50,000 miles) I do not own SKY TV, nor Virgin, nor Netflix, I just can't see the point and if I book a plane, I go for cheap up to 5 hour flights, I'm not interested in 'comfort,' or drinks or food on a plane, or what some might judge as a 'status' area.
I actively try to buy cheap, even for my Hiatus Hernia, Peptak instead of Gaviscon. Even my PC tower must now be at least 10 years old, when I need to I just add an up to date part. In the fashion stakes, I don't care, I'm 74 and my M & S shirts and trousers go back years!
I have wasted money though, which I always regret, especially when I think about the silly money I paid out to buy my Paramo Alta 2, for me a total waste of money in hindsight! And I do have weaknesses, coffee and cake, eating out when hiking and wine and beer, but at least I don't smoke!
Do I compete with you? ;D ;D ;D
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Is there a cheaper way than the OS yearly subscription. I like to create routes on OS mapping and transfer the GPX to my Garmin.I want to be able to create routes on an actual Ordnance Survey map though, not Open Source.
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Is there a cheaper way than the OS yearly subscription. I like to create routes on OS mapping and transfer the GPX to my Garmin.I want to be able to create routes on an actual Ordnance Survey map though, not Open Source.
You're aware you can do exactly that on the WalkLakes (https://www.walklakes.co.uk/maps/) website? The link here will take you to open source mapping, but if you register, for free, you can access OS 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps for the whole of the UK, and import or export gpx files. Bing maps (https://www.bing.com/maps) obviously also provides OS mapping, but without the handy route planning tools of Walklakes...
[Edit - I also find it helpful to be able to switch between open source and Ordnance Survey mapping - at least here in the Highlands there will often be paths shown on one which aren't shown on the other. And its not by any means always the OS who have got it right!]
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You're aware you can do exactly that on the WalkLakes (https://www.walklakes.co.uk/maps/) website? The link here will take you to open source mapping, but if you register, for free, you can access OS 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps for the whole of the UK, and import or export gpx files. Bing maps (https://www.bing.com/maps) obviously also provides OS mapping, but without the handy route planning tools of Walklakes...
[Edit - I also find it helpful to be able to switch between open source and Ordnance Survey mapping - at least here in the Highlands there will often be paths shown on one which aren't shown on the other. And its not by any means always the OS who have got it right!]
I had used it in the past. It is certainly a bargain. I notice they are asking for donations now. A message said I had been using walk lakes for 18 months, so would I consider donating to the site, when in reality I had forgotten about the site. The one thing that I find not so good is that the zooming in jumps quickly when going from 1:50k to 1:25K and it zooms in a lot, giving no steps in between, unlike the OS app, which is very versatile & gradual if required.
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ey?
Im a skinflint too.! Did I just read you can get OS on viewranger for a £1 per annum???
You misread my missive. I did say VR was only £1 More at full price in relation to OS discount price.
Will have a look at Maverick.
So now we have Maverick, OS, VR, Windy Maps, garmin, and Google maps to consider. Any others out there?
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is this the official OS Map App, if it is it was good it is absolutely useless now, they updated and changed it about 6 weeks ago and it has been bugged to hell ever since, it is a shambles, read some of the feedback on the PlayStore....I used it in the week and it is working better but the arrow does not point in the correct direction when walking like it used to and the zoom function is absolute rubbish as it zooms out too far meaning you cannot scan your route/surrounding area easily at smaller scale as you used to be able to.....it is shmabolic how OS Maps have treated users recently and no wonder they have an offer!
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As far as I can see the OS app and Viewranger offer a subscription to online maps direct from the OS allowing you to download, edit and cache them as much as you want. The others get round having to pay OS by using Bing maps which are the same maps but free, presumably Microsoft pay for them rather than having to produce their own maps . This allows the user to access OS maps free of charge and the app will save sections for offline use just as you can save any webpage. Editing the maps to produce routes is trickier as Bing doesn't allow this.
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As far as I can see the OS app and Viewranger offer a subscription to online maps direct from the OS allowing you to download, edit and cache them as much as you want. The others get round having to pay OS by using Bing maps which are the same maps but free, presumably Microsoft pay for them rather than having to produce their own maps . This allows the user to access OS maps free of charge and the app will save sections for offline use just as you can save any webpage. Editing the maps to produce routes is trickier as Bing doesn't allow this.
I think you are wrong. Bing and Microsoft do not provide OS mapping nowadays unless you download ******
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One thing I have just discovered is quite a few of the routes I published on the app website seem to have been deleted. As far as I can tell the app on my phone is working OK in terms of zoom but I have been unable to use it in anger for the past 7 weeks.
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I think you are wrong. Bing and Microsoft do not provide OS mapping nowadays unless you download ******
If you access Bing Maps on a Windows PC all of the UK maps are OS. You don't need to download anything. To get them on a mobile device you need a developer key or access through an app like Maverick or have a Windows phone.
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If you access Bing Maps on a Windows PC all of the UK maps are OS. You don't need to download anything. To get them on a mobile device you need a developer key or access through an app like Maverick or have a Windows phone.
As a Windows Phone user (stop laughing, please) I can say that you don't get OS maps on Bing with it - unless I'm missing something!
Microsoft preinstall Here maps on the phone, which are similar to Open Street Map and not much use for anything but roads and general map-gazing.
You can get genuine OS 1:50k and 1:25k mapping identical to the paper maps on a Windows Phone with a free app GPS To Grid Ref and a paid one (a very low price) called GeoGPS, but if you're out walking you must have a wifi connection to see the maps. Also you can only see the area around your current location, meaning you can't use them to view or plan a walk somewhere else (I could be wrong with GeoGPS, it might be possible to cache maps of a different area, but I haven't really looked into it).
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I think that Bing maps were available on Windows 8.1 phones as an option. Maybe not now. I don't have a Windows phone to check this though. I was just interested in why some apps charge 20 odd quid for OS maps and others offer them free. Developers integrating the Bing OS maps seems a likely answer.
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Reading up on Bing OS it looks like they use older iterations of the OS stock. Not a great problem for walkers but maybe not so good for drivers and cyclists as changes most often occur in the urban environment.
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Definitely going to have to have a char with the help desk tomorrow. I have found quite a few of the @500 routes that I have posted are missing from MyRoutes. I can't be sure if there is a pattern as I have not conducted a full analysis but so far it seems that most of the routes near my current location that have been deleted - but not all of them - very odd.
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Reading up on Bing OS it looks like they use older iterations of the OS stock. Not a great problem for walkers but maybe not so good for drivers and cyclists as changes most often occur in the urban environment.
Funny you should say that, because on occasions I have compared rural portions of my years-old Memory Map OS maps that are on my pc hard drive with the online Bing OS maps, and I haven't seen any difference between them, when I expected the Bing ones to be more up to date.
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Im beginning to think for me personally there are no advantages in paying for a O S subscription. One can create routes on Walklakes, print it off and I use Garmin gps so could download a gpx route to it...job done.I like the OS mapping app and playing around creating/saving routes but it is beginning to lose its appeal at £25 a time.
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Im beginning to think for me personally there are no advantages in paying for a O S subscription. One can create routes on Walklakes, print it off and I use Garmin gps so could download a gpx route to it...job done.I like the OS mapping app and playing around creating/saving routes but it is beginning to lose its appeal at £25 a time.
which is why I currently like Viewranger due to the quality of it various types of free downloadable maps as well as the ability to subscribe or not, to fully updated OS maps as well as being able to purchase just enough of the OS maps (tiles) to complete a particular walk.
I am looking at other apps when time allows. There are quite a lot out there at the moment.
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Definitely going to have to have a char with the help desk tomorrow. I have found quite a few of the @500 routes that I have posted are missing from MyRoutes. I can't be sure if there is a pattern as I have not conducted a full analysis but so far it seems that most of the routes near my current location that have been deleted - but not all of them - very odd.
I had a deeper look at my missing routes, up to 10 per cent were missing and despite my initial impression, the missing routes were fairly random. I spoke with the OS help desk this morning, they were at a loss. We speculated if there was an upper limit of routes per user but the help desk chap said he did not think there was one. He took my user name and said he would try to arrange for all my files to be restored. Just over 2 hours later, they seem to be back.