First, a few clarifying facts on Garmin's 2008 Maps:

• All new Garmin units are shipping with the new maps pre-installed
• Anyone who purchased a Garmin GPS after May 1st is entitled to a free upgrade if your unit has the older maps installed
• The updated maps are available via Garmin's website, or at various retail shops around the country and on the web
• To get the free updated maps from Garmin, you must register your unit on Garmin's website, and then call customer support
• No need to back-up your address book or additional POIs - everything will still be there after the update
• Currently there is no SD card version of the map update; you'll need to use a PC or Mac with 2GB of free space, have a DVD-ROM drive, and a USB cable. The update takes about 1.5 hours to complete

How do you know if you need the update? Power on your GPS and tap on the wrench icon -> Map -> Map Info, if you see anything other than "City Navigator North America NT 2008", then you need the update.

According to Garmin tech support, Garmin's own web-store is back-ordered until August. My local Best Buy had the map update in stock, so if you're in a rush to get the latest maps you'll probably have better luck at a nearby retailer or e-tailer than ordering the map update from Garmin directly.

Thankfully, the Map Update 2008 DVD supports both Vista (and older Windows clients) as well as MacOS (Intel AND non-Intel).

The product key is printed on a large green sticker on the back of the DVD case. Make sure you don't loose this number -- you'll need it to install the maps.

So just what's included in the new maps?

• More than 6 million miles of road coverage
• 47 updated cities
• New street developments
• Over 6 million updated points of interest, including gas stations, parking garages, restaurants, hotels and ATM locations
• Postal code support for Canada

Insert the DVD into your PC or Mac to start the update process. I'll be walking through the update process on a PC running Windows Vista Ultimate.

After inserting the DVD into the computer, Windows will ask if you want to start the Setup.exe program. Click on "Run Setup.exe" to begin the update. NOTE: If the AutoPlay window doesn't appear after inserting the DVD, click "start" and then "Run..." and type the drive letter of your DVD-ROM drive, followed by windows\setup. For example, D:\windows\setup

After the Garmin Map Update window appears, click on Next

Check the box accepting the Software and Data License Agreement and click Next to continue

Before the Garmin Map Updater can update the maps on your GPS, the software needs to install drivers so your PC/Mac will recognize the GPS when connected via the USB cable. The map updater takes care of this automatically - click Next to begin the driver installation

The Windows Security dialog appears, asking if you're sure you want to install the device driver for your Garmin GPS. This dialog box may appear up to 3 times before the driver is fully installed (it did on my system).