Can I Buy A Set POI's Like Garmin Has

Look at all the poi's on this site. It encompasses a lot of them.

comes in to play, NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas don't spend a lot of time or money on these databases. And no you can not buy them separately.
You will do much better finding what you need here then depending on the community to keep them current.

What an awful idea. Have you actually looked at the Garmin POIs? Obviously I don't know their condition for your area, but where I live the 2009 POIs lacked several grocery stores that have been in my area for several years, even though they include other stores for the same chain that are much farther away. And the 2009.11 update didn't improve on that one bit. Same for many other POIs that I check on the built-in database. But while they are missing a lot, they also include a lot of things that don't even exist as retail locations. The best explanation that I can find for this is they managed to harvest a business list somewhere and in doing so managed to include many private residences that business owners listed. It is hard to understand why they would do this though, since they are well known to charge for inclusion in the internal POIs if a business wants listed. A Garmin support rep even told me that they did, although I didn't really ask.

It is important not to trust the internal POIs if you are looking to find the closest of any type of location. If you run out of gas, for example, you may walk much further than you need to if you let your Garmin guide you to the closest gas station.

There are a few internal POIs that are handy, such as Post Offices. But overall I seldom even look at them. I can't imagine actually paying money for them, and I expect Garmin would get more complaints than it is worth if they tried to sell updates.

I can't imagine any reason why you would not want to pick and choose what POI files here you have any interest in and just download them and then install them all. You can download as many as you want for free.

I would rather personalize my POI's instead of having a "one size fits all" approach.
JeffSh

I am just getting started but am tiring of loading a database here and a database there. Wish I could get all the US poi's here in one wack.

How long do you think it will take me to load all of them here one at a time here for US locations. I would much rather have POI's from here but would it be an "Awful" idea to want them all from here but not one at a time.

Problem is like this, I really dont want to load the "Safeway" POI's for example but sure as I dont have them I will wish I did when my wife calls and says Christmas Hams are on sale and I should stop by (or somthing along these lines).

Regards,

Not that I have that many loaded - and probably never will load that many custom POI. But your scenario raises another question. Why would you think you need to have every grocery store, convenience mart, fuel stop, hotel, camp ground or whatever loaded into your GPS? I honestly feel it would take me more time to search for the nearest store than to tell my bride "That's nice dear. If the sale is on for a few more days, we'll make plans to go when we do our normal shopping."

Another point, and I'm certain there are a great many others here in the forum that, like me, don't travel with a GPS in the car for the normal commute. I know the route, I've been doing it for 19 years and where the bottlenecks normally occur and the bypass streets. Leaving something as small and recognizable as a GPS in the car is an open invitation in a great many areas.

As most of my travel is within 100 miles of home, why do I need to have the location of a retailer 700 miles away? If I'm going on a trip, that's something different but I wouldn't load grocery stores for a vacation trip when I'm planning to stay in hotels. Drug/pharmacy stores, that's a different issue. The same for favorite chain eateries.

I think as you get more familiar with your unit the outlook about what has to be stored will change. (And when in a different city, there almost always is a phone book handy to look up an address and the front desk of the hotel/motel is a wonderful source of what's close.)

Just can't see the need for downloading a few hundred thousand poi's. If I need something in an new area couldn't I shout-out to a passer by for info or bearing. I would think it be enough to get down the road. After all, I would have saved my location before starting out.

If you have a cell phone then you already have access to Google's business database. All you have to do is dial 1-800-GOOG-411. (That's 1-800-466-4411). Then say the business name and the city/state. You will be then be able to (1) connect to the business or (2) get the business info (phone number & address) or (3) have a text message or map sent to your cell phone.

The service is free and works great. Granted its a little more time consuming than using built in POIs, but its also ten times more accurate than the built in POIs.

http://mobile.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=13...