Heat00

can you guys help me with the POI's?

If I understand correctly, I have to download and install the files somehow?

where do I find these and how do I Install them?

HumVee

There's millions of Points of Interests already on your nuvi. Are you wanting to download additional POI's? You can get them from all kinds of locations, from Garmin to POIFactory and others. Garmin's tools also allow you to create your own custom POI's. You will need Garmin's POI Loader software (free) to manage and load them to your nuvi.

Heat00

ah i see.

Maybe I need to read the manual.

I would like to have some of the factory pois showing all the time, ie gas stations .

is there a way to have them always showing? so i don't have to do a search when I want to see gas stations?

HumVee

Heat00, I believe that viewing POI's in map is zoom level dependent. If I zoom down to 200 ft. scale or smaller, I can see all kinds of POI's pop up on the display. I can actually tap on the icon to get the POI's name, and choose to navigate there (as a via point or replacing the current destination). If that's not enough for you, or you'd like to easily identify your favorite gas station brands by icon as you're driving down the road, then I strongly recommend that you check out sites like POI Factory. You can download POI lists of a specific gas station chain, and their company logo as an icon. Start with the "Getting Started" section, and you'll learn everything you need to.

Another note: Garmin's POI Loader application allows you to set up proximity alerts for different POI's. They can be set to pop up a visual indication and/or a audio alert as you get within a certain distance.

Heat00

can that be done for factory set pois? or only ones that are imported through the loader??

HumVee

I've downloaded and installed POI Loader, and created a free account on POI Factory. I downloaded some custom POI's (Shell gas stations and Ace Hardware Stores). I downloaded bitmap icons to go with them. I then proceeded to experiment.

No, POI Loader only works with custom POI's. However, there's no reason that you couldn't have custom POI's at the same coordinates, and set those to be triggered by distance and/or distance and speed (like for photo radar locations). You can have lots of different custom POI's in your custom POI folder, and as long as you have your POI Loader set to Manual instead of Express, you will be prompted regarding proximity or speed triggers.

You can have as many POI files in the upload folder as you want - they will all be uploaded to your GPS unit or external memory card (whichever you choose). You can use POI Loader to erase the custom POI's from your GPS any time (it's an all or nothing shot - but you can then just upload the POI's you want to keep back up to your GPS unit again). You can also just choose to save a file for uploading into MapSource. There's a few more specifications, but you can read up on them yourself if you're interested in pursuing this further.

The only problem I had is that I can't seem to get the custom POI icons to show up in the map view. It's possible that they only show up during driving. I will test it out tomorrow.