Painfully slow transfer rate when installing POIs

I don't understand what's going on, either. I download about 9300 POIs to my 660 when I update it (every week or so), and it takes 2 minutes or so.

You didn't mention how many POIs you're transferring, but I'm going to guess at *a lot*.

Two things that come to mind--

How much free space do you have on your 360? I can see things taking much longer if you were really tight on space. (But that much longer?)

Have you changed things in your USB environment? Different ports, different hubs, other things moved around sharing with the 360? Some ill-tempered old-and-slow USB devices can slow things down tremendously, when sharing a port or a hub.

I'd look at free space, and also try updating where the 360 is the only thing plugged into a port directly on your computer.

Good luck!

USB Cables would have the same pinout.

Thanks for the reply.

I had a little accident and deleted my entire POI file from the desktop last week. I ended up re-building it over the past two nights and it's a lot briefer than my original file. This newly created and smaller file is taking forever to feed into the GPS.

I really don't have that many categories. I just counted and it consists of 34 files in the main view. I do use sub-folders for FOOD, for example, where there are numerous POI files.

I dunno, this entire POI file is about 2/3 the size of the previous file that was deleted, but is taking ages to upload/update.

BTW, I have loads of room on the Nuvi's drive. I'll double-check that tonight when I have access to the USB cable.

That's not what I wanted to hear but figured it would be the case. I have used my Magellan cable and Motorola phone cables in the past without issue or slow transfer speed.

There are two phases to the POI transfer--

(1) transmogrifying the POI data for the 360, and
(2) actually shoveling it to the device.

I'm guessing that something you did in regathering POI data is confusing the snot out of the Garmin software performing step (1).

I'd look at things on that side of the fence.

all I did was download the files again from this site and throw them into a folder on my desktop. I then tell POI Loader to feed them into the Garmin. Not sure what else I should review.

Thx.

Which type of POI files are you loading - CSV, GPX or a mixture?

I only ask because of this recent topic about a GPX file slow upload time:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/16925

Gary, thanks for your reply. I've got a mixture of both (90% .csv files) as did the previous POI file.

I'll read thru the link you referenced.

I checked remaining space on the drive and I've still got 700MB available.

The POI file is 14MB in size.

OK, sounds like I need to re-think my use of the .gpx files even though I used them previously.

One other thing mentioned in that thread: I, too, upgraded to that newer version of POI Loader

I also noticed very high CPU usage now when running POI loader to the point you can't use the computer for anything else.

I am using POI Loader version 2.5.2.0

In the past, I have sometimes jumped too fast into the latest version of some programs and suffered for it. I'm trying to adopt the old philosophy - if it ain't broke... You know the rest.

I'm not saying that your's is a problem caused by POI Loader, because I don't know that for certain. In general, I try to hold back on software/firmware updates until I can read other users' experiences.

The highest I've seen my CPU usage when running POI Loader is 50% (WinXP on a P4, 3.2GHz CPU).

OK, I've done a new test. I went thru and looked at how many .gpx files I had, removed them and replaced them with the equivalent .csv file. One of the .gpx files was quite large. Another didn't have a .csv equivalent so it has been purged. I left a few small .gpx files in place as there were no .csv equivalents.

I then let POI loader create the new file and place it on the desktop instead of on the nuvi. This only took 3 mins which is really quick.

I'm now going to let POI Loader create the file on the nuvi and see how long that takes.

WOW, that was REALLY fast. About 3 mins to load the .gpi directly on the nuvi!

Two notable .gpx bloat hogs:

NRHP - NE and Dunkin' D's !!

It just so happens that the POI files I've chosen to download from POI Factory have all been .csv files. Using POI Loader, they upload to my 660 in a minute or less. So, I've never experienced the slow upload problem some .gpx files seem to produce. It makes me wary of .gpx files.

GPX files with sensible (ie appropriate) content don't trouble POILoader at all...

I just rebuilt the UK 'Safety Camera' database as a test.

21,165 POIs (all with Custom Audio alerts & bitmaps), grouped by camera type, took 36 seconds to build.

The resulting POI.GPI is 2,441,629 bytes.


I think I prefer the .gpx when available...I can use the Bluetooth/phone dialer which is kind of cool.

Everyone to their own; but if the GPS doesn't support dialing (or if the POI file doesn't contain phone numbers), for me there are few, if any, advantages to gpx POIs and a whole lot of disadvantages.

RT

Still trying to learn!

What are the disadvantages of gpx files?

Just to name a few:
1. As mentioned in this and other threads, slower loading.
2. More difficult for newbees to create their own POIs.
3. More difficult to edit.
4. Without special software, more difficult to modify if you need:
(a)nuvi linebreaks.
(b)Longitude and latitude swapped.
(c)degree/minute/second coordinates changed to decimal.
(d)Convert to OV2.
(e)Split POI file into seperate state files.
etc, etc.

RT