Archive for August 23, 2006

Like I said earlier, I broke down and got myself a really cool toy last week.. After seeing Brian’s and talking to Randy about it I broke down and got myself a Garman Nuvi 360. My justification for getting it was the traffic integration feature as well as our upcoming trip to europe… But in reality its really just cuz its a cool toy and I’m a geek. Up until now I never wanted a Nav system because the fact is I don’t get lost driving around SF or going to work – I live here. But the other features seemed to make it make sense for home and its small enough that I can take it on trips.. So I figured what the hell..

So.. Now that i’ve been using it for a little while here are some observations for those considering it.. Since I couldn’t find good discussions on the thing online I figured I’d share!

• Interface is very good.. It took me a little while to figure out how to get it to show me maps for a place that I wasn’t currently at because it is always trying to give you directions from your current location. But if you choose ‘Find Location’ and navigate to an address you can then select ‘show map’ at the bottom of the screen.. Thats very cool when you’re trying to look at maps in other states or countries cuz otherwise it’ll try and drive you there which is rough for points across an ocean.. (strangely it couldn’t find a route from SF to berlin..
• Dashboard Mount: This has been giving me grief. First, when I put the power cord into the mount I couldn’t get it out.. still can’t.. which is frustrating since I HATE cords all around my car.. I only want it plugged in when it needs juice. It has also started loosing suction on the window lately – probably just needs cleaning but still.. This is particularly a problem living in a big city where you can’t really leave a cool gadget in sight when parked – taking it on and off is a little troublesome..
• Traffic integration: This is REALLY cool.. shows you both incidents on the freeway as well as red, green, and red on roads to indicate traffic flow.. WAY cool.. Confusing part here is they have a bunch of different models (10,11,and 12) and I had a hard time figuring out which one to buy.. I finally just picked the 12 cuz it looked the least conspicuous and it seems to work.. Only issue I have with it is that it needs the nuvi to be connected to power which means it needs to be in the cradle (kind of a bummer when I got the thing at work and the cradle was at home..)
• European Maps: So this one was wierd.. They have two versions – one that comes on a DVD and one that comes pre loaded onto an SD card.. The one on the SD card, in retrospect is what I should have gotten but I couldn’t tell and got the DVD version. This version requires that you run the maps on a PC and then send them to the Nuvi.. great if you don’t want all the maps but a hassle otherwise (and thank GOD for Bootcamp – otherwise i’d be screwed).. Its also kind of counter-intuitive how to get the right things sent across.. It turns out you have to go into the application and select the segments of the maps in the map browser and hilite them and then click transfer to get the maps over.. There really shoudl be a ‘send all the damn maps’ option or more clear directions..
• Phone integration: This is also cool and everyone I talked to says they can hear me fine.. I do wish the volume went up louder on the thing though – road noise makes it a little hard to hear some times.. I also wish there was a ‘answer with phone’ option for the situations where I don’t want to talk on speaker.. Its probably there but I couldn’t find it..

Overall this thing is REALLY damn cool and I HIGHLY recommend it.. just a little nits that I wish worked differently.. but thats OK.. I’ll live.. still love my gadget.. can’t wait to try it in europe!

(Oh yea.. and I need to post a link to Technorati Profile so I can claim my blog.. so here it is..)

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