Congratulations on your eTrex Summit HC. My original Legend had 8MB of memory. Your new Summit has 24 MB of storage, which covers a lot of dirt. And it is not very difficult with your unit to modify create or modify new mapsets from a Garmin MapSource product and load it on your unit.
I found that when traveling the Base Map that comes with a Garmin Unit is very usable for general travel and it even found postage stamp communities in the West. Initially I chose to install U.S. Topo maps. It has been updated by Map Source Topo U.S. 2008. The average map size in the new version is .6 MB. What map software came with your unit?
I recommend that sign-up notification for unit software updates from Garmin.
http://www8.garmin.com/support/download.jspMany users do not care for the manuals that Garmin provides, but I have found that if I set with manual and work with the different unit screens while I watch TV my knowledge base increases. The use of NiHM re-chargeable batteries have been cost effective because it allows me a lot training time on the unit.
Depending on how you care for the unit a screen protector maybe in order. I purchased material designed to protect PDA screens from an office supply store and installed it.
