POI DEFINITION

Welcome aboard!

A waypoint is a point on the route to your destination, and can include the destination. A POI is a Point Of Interest that is just a 'bookmark' of a location you want to remember.

Ex: I want to go from NYC to San Diego by way of St. Loius. St. Loius is a waypoint on my route. Now I can make St. Loius ALSO a POI because I like to stop and look at the arch.

HTH!
Mike

Your GPS can store thousands of POI's. They become know as waypoints when you use them as stops along your specified route.

the word Waypoint in Garmin speak was replaced with the term Via Point. You could make these to change your routing to you needs. A POI (Point of Interest) is a list of just about any kind of business, Rest Areas, etc. Originally they would show you what restaurants, gas stations, etc. could be found near an interstate exit. The POI Factory community has greatly increased the the POIs.

A POI, point of interest, is simply a spot on the globe that may contain some information about the spot, name, company, etc. A Waypoint is a spot on a Route, or a trip, something you'll pass as you travel. A POI may become a waypoint if it is included on a route.
In the old days, witht eh connect the dots activities:

POI's are dots.
Routes are dots connected, and then the dots are called waypoints.
The GPS unit ties everything together with varying degrees of external information.

So, I've looked at favorites with a text editor. A destination such as my daughters address in Reno has a Lat/long attached to it. And these favorites have a defined format. Sometimes I use a Garmin 350 when hiking for a position check by say, pre-entering a prominent landmark like a lake outlet or a ridge crossing or just a waypoint on a trail manually from my NG TOPO program. Would these then be POI's? If so, is there a whole separate way of loading GPS routes into a Garmin? Because routes must contain additional info beyond lat/long and elevation. Example: I enter a lat/long for Sonora Junction(CA108/US395), save it as Sonora Junc in my favorites and then later touch GO! The Garmin then routes me to that point. What is the POI and where would I find the route when looking from my computer with the Garmin attached?
Could I off-load that route?

Sorry, I have a whole lot to learn about GPS programming, formats and loading.

As was mentioned earlier, WayPoints are intermediate points or stops on your route from Point A to Point B. WayPoints help you establish your route.

Say you are travelling from Arcata to Reno; you could take the "quickest route" but say you want to stop at a friend's place in Redding and a couple of beautiful viewpoints in te Lassen National Forest. If your GPS supports Route Planning, you could enter addresses and land locatinos as WayPoints and set your GPS to guide you on your trip - taking you to the WayPoints that you entered.

POIs are Points of Interest, like restaurants or gas stations or rest areas. They can be pre-loaded on your GPS or uploaded in one of the many files on POI Factory. These would not likely be your primary destinations (your WayPoits), but could be very useful. If you're 20 miles east of Redding and you realize you need gas, check the Gas Station POI file and up pops the distance and direction to the nearest gas stations.

In a pinch, a POI file can be a life saver - that's why the Combined Rest Area file is so popular!

Be careful though, as not all GPS units support WayPoints. My 660 for example does not support Route Planning.

Just checked again- the Nuvi 855 that I just order does support both. That's good because that was one of the reasons I ordered it