Difference between Preloaded POI and Downloaded ones from Factory

The pre-loaded poi's are a couple years old by the time they get installed on your gpsr (even with current maps). The ones here are more up to date.

The preloaded pois are great, but you have to do more searching for what you want, whereas the pois on this site are more categorized, making it easier to find what you want at 80 MPH.

Another benefit is that if you have a favorite/preferred POI, it's easier to download the custom POI file and search that particular file.

For example, let's say you have a favorite restaurant. That restaurant's locations may already be loaded on your GPSr, but you would have to type in the name each time you were looking for the nearest location. If you had a custom POI file for your favorite restaurant, on the other hand, you could have the GPS search only that custom file (as opposed to having to scroll through dozens of other restaurants big and small).

Thanks for the replies. This helps a lot.

Is it better to load up multi POI files or combine the ones you use into one and then load.

I do a little bit of Web front end programing and like what Google earth does with POIs. Check option to see more. Would it help if we developed something for this site that would store all the POI files in one database and then each user checks which sets to include and the site creates one POI file for download?

To add my 8-cents to the discussion, yes many of the POIs added to this site are likely already in many of the preloaded POIs of your Garmin. There are many reasons why people want these in custom POIs. A few that come to mind include:

1) Custom POI files here may contain updates not yet appearing in the preloaded POIs (as someone already pointed out).

2) Custom POIs allow you to add alarms to POI files so you can be automatically alerted when you are near one (you can not do this with the built in POIs). For example, perhaps you simply live for Starbucks coffee and can never pass up stopping in one for a cup. With a Custom Starbucks POI file you can have it give you an alert when you are approaching one. Maybe you drive a Natural Gas fueled car and need to be alerted when you are near a CNG filling station (which are few and far between).

3) Custom POIs can be ANYTHING you can pinpoint with coordinates, including things not likely to be found in the built in POI files. For example, on this site there is a Covered Bridge POI file. I doubt you will find Covered Bridges in the preloaded Garmin POIs. Or perhaps you have a weird obsession with roadside memorials. A Custom POI could be created to identify locations for those.

4) Custom POIs can be used to save personal locations you want on the GPS but do not necessarily want cluttering up your Favorites list. A good use for this is vacation planning. Perhaps you are going to visit Orlando, FL. Before you go you put together a list of all the places you want to visit. You can then put this on your unit as a Custom POI called "Orlando" and now you have a one stop location on your GPS to pull up those places. You can then remove this POI file after you get back.

5) Custom POIs could be places you need to compile and distribute to a group/club of people. For example, your company might have a Custom POI file of customer locations that is distributed to their sales people when out on customer visits. Or maybe you belong to radio control airplane club or astronomy club and want to identify locations (parking lots, fields, etc.) that are good places for flying or setting up telescopes to be distributed to the club members. Meals On Wheels might put their "client" list in a POI file for the drivers. Etc.

6) And finally, many of the POI files here... well, yes, are simply here because some people are obsessed and simply enjoy making POI files even if they are not necessarily all that useful over the built in POI files.

Cheers,
PT

Every time that you load your custom POIs with POI Loader, the custom POIs that you previously loaded are erased unless you rename the file after they were loaded.
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/5695

That would be for Miss POI or Jim to answer.

Right which is why you add your POIs to a folder and then leave them there. Each time you run the POI Loader, it will load anything in that folder. Drop new ones into that folder as needed, but always leave the existing ones there unless you want them off your GPS.

Cheers,
PT

I think most of us have concluded that it is a big advantage in searching to have categories built into our Custom-POIs. This is done via folders and sub-folders on our computers. A single POI file would defeat this functionality.

If you meant have the site combine the various POI files into a single POI.gpi file, it would be difficult programming at best, and it wouldn't allow the user to add and remove files for specific trips, etc.

Nice offer, though.

The way I interpreted his question/offer was that he could help write a program (?) that would allow us as members of this forum to be able to click on multiple POI files from this site's database and download them all at once rather than each one that we want individually. This of course would benefit a new member more since they would tend to need more files at once where established members usually only download one at a time from the "recent list" and not from the alphabetical database.

EDIT: After re-reading his comment and your reply a few more times, I'm not sure what he meant.