Garmin 168 sounder map capacity

[Jim Ordway]

With the 2.5 meg of memory, can a person load mapcreate w/FHS for an entire lake (westerm Erie, Winnebago up to Poygan) on the unit, or is capacity limited to just parts of the map? Also, with the detail of the garmin bluechart, does that lead to smaller portions of lakes being loaded for use? This unit came with my boat, and although I will likely end up with X15s and X16, I am wondering if I should invest in CDs to use the 168 to hold me over. I have been throught the Garmin web page and spend way too much time hold waiting for a tech.
Thanks in advance,

[jiggin]

Jim, I have the Garmin 168 with FHS version 4. I was able to load the following on my unit:

Winnebago
Poygan
Green Bay
Menomenie river
Sturgeon Bay
Depere (Fox River)
Detroit River
Lake St. Clair
Lake Erie - Western Basin

This was a total of 2.1 MB. The only difference when there is a lot of data loaded is that it seems to be a bit slower when redrawing an area while zooming in or out. Otherwise I love this unit.

[Jim Ordway]

Jiggin,
How many different maps did you have to buy to cover these areas?
Do these maps show contour lines or just sounding areas?
Thanks for your input.
Jim

[jiggin]

Jim, I bought the Mapsource (FHS) version 4 CD with ALL of the regions. It is 1 CD that you get with 2 unlock codes from Garmin. The first unlock code opens 1 region and the second code unlocks all regions. I think it has something like 400 lakes on it. As for the detail, it has all the contour lines that you would find on a FHS paper map. In fact, I think the software for this CD comes from scanning the FHS paper maps. I compared my paper map of Winnebago to my Garmin 168 software and it looks to be dead on. Hope this helps. Also, it only takes about 4-5 minutes to reload another lake onto the Garmin unit, very easy to work with.