Nuvi 780 just arrived

If you do your setup before you let it see satellites, then you can iron some of the bugs out and test most things. Register the unit and do the updates when everythng is working.

So you mean that I should use the POIloader now before I take it outside to validate I have a decent unit?

Then outside to capture satelites, get MSN going before I register and upgrade the installed map.

By setup I mean load the custom POI, alerts, icons set the options and then test the unit to be certain everything is working. You can test custom POI by simulating a route to see if the alerts work. You can even test the FM transmitter, bluetooth and all the bells before registering. If you have any failures, then you haven't started the clock on the map update. It's really the only way to grab a few extra days before the 60 day clock starts ticking.

If you have a problem, then you can return a "new" unit and someone else gets the "new" unit as a replacement or a super refurb buy.

schwert,

I received a NUVI 200 for a gift over a year ago and upgraded in June to the 780. I hope you get as much use and enjoyment with your 780 and MSN as I have. The traffic warnings work great in Phoenix and Las Vegas and the weather advisories with flash flood and other warnings have been helpful also. Using Bing to send routes to the unit and loading addresses through MSN without the USB cable have been well worth the money.

Again, I wish you much enjoyment with your 780 and happy downloading here on POI Factory.

Do yourself a favor and BACKUP everything on the GPS unit.

Just in case something happens to make it lose some of the files... you can put them back without having to send it back to Garmin.

It would look like the OP has already done a backup as stated in his original post.

I have sent my custom POI file to SD card, but I had not thought of testing the route...great idea.

I will see about the FM transmitter too, though I don't have large hopes for that. Bluetooth is technology that has not yet entered my realm.

If all looks good I will get going with it.

And yup...already did a full backup...learned about that here. I doubt I would have ever considered it without reading a bit here first.

Included map is 2009...so I will likely upgrade soon.

OOps....My Bad....

Update the map soon...don't miss out on the date te unit first acquires the sats. Do it in your "return" period, that way if there are any issues... you CAN still return it.

I used the unit last night and this morning. All looks good with it to me.

Has anyone noticed that Jill seems to get more irritated on about the 5th Recalulating message

Drove her nuts coming my way to work this morning.

I think I will download the 2010.20 map set later today or tomorrow. I am pretty sure I will spring for the lifetime maps sometime later this year.

I can see all my custom POI's and will get the redlight set in a couple of weeks.

MSN started feeding me data not too long after I left work last night. Traffic seems like it actually may be helpful around Seattle. I thought the rest of the data feed would just be fluff, but while waiting for my wife last night I read through the news headlines, looked at the movies playing and checked a stock or two....Interesting. Not sure if I will pay for a lifetime subscription, but the three months should reveal how useful it actually is pretty easily.

I like this unit. It seems quite easy to use.

Does anyone bother using this feature? It seems that the sound quality is rather poor with static. I tried a few open frequencies and determined that this is a pretty much useless feature.

I would rather listen to the radio/CD and have the Garmin unit independent of my stereo.

If you don't like the recalculating message you can use http://turboccc.wikispaces.com/TTSVoiceEditor to change it.I changed to listen up wrong way. You are right they do get a little bit more upset after a couple times.

How useful the FM transmitter is depends a lot on where your car antenna is located. The closer the two are, the better the sound. The Nuvi is really low powered on FM.

Also, your MSN antenna that is part of you power cord may cause some static noises as well if it is too close to your head unit. Hard to figure out the placement of your device consider the amount of space you have to work with in your car.

Overall the FM transmitter seems like a trivial feature...it does not seem to have much chance of working well in the first place, and why would I EVER want to have my stero system locked into being a simple speaker for my nuvi?

I use the FM transmitter all the time. I put 4 Gigs of mp3's on an sd card and play them through my car speakers. Works well while driving in the country. I would hook up a cable connection, but my car stereo didn't come with any inputs.

It's so much more fun to hear "dude, you are lost. I'll find another map." instead of 'recalculating'

I switched to British Emily...maybe her repeated Recalculating will have some charm

Like you, we're from WA, and got our unit from Amazon.com

My DH and I got this as an Anniversary gift to each other. We're going to drive to the east coast, Maine to Florida, then home across the southern US. We thought this would be really helpful along the way. Since we're not leaving until the end of September, I'm not going to activate the MSN or up grade the map until then.

OK, here's my question...Where did you find the information about backing up the device and how to do it?

You should back up your device incase something happens. It's very easy. Connect your device to your computer via the USB cable. Access your device's files by exploring your device and just do a copy of all of the files. Paste the files into a new folder and store it somewhere on your computer.

Just got mine too. Been playing with it all week. Some newbie impressions (stuff you probably already know but may not):

*The 780 seems like a great buy right now. All the features of the CU "best buy" 760 but with MSN Direct. Got it for $199.99 at Newegg, $1.99 shipping, 6% Bing cash back, no tax, $189.98 total. Not a refurb. Amazon charges me sales tax but this is still cheaper.

* Very well built. I can see why this cost $800 2 yrs ago.

*FM works fine for me. Maybe cuz my car is small and the antenna isn't too far away (above rear window). Music doesn't sound as good as my CD/mp3 in-dash player tho.

*You need 5GBs of free disk space to upgrade the maps (had to move some stuff off the C drive).

*Holding the "Back" button gets you to the home screen.

*You can force it to take another route by adding a "via point" in the direction of where you want to go (tap the Nav screen and it will go to overhead view, zoom out).

*When it insists on going the wrong way (it once tried to route me in a 10 mile circle to go half a mile) just start driving and it will soon see the error of its ways.

*Finding highway rest rooms: Where to?/POI/down arrow/Auto sales/down arrow/Rest areas-tourist info. Aaaahhh.

*For God sake, set it to QWERTY!

*Hit the green bar and then "show map" to see your entire route.

*If it hangs, clear "My Data" (this happened after I did the map update)

*Keep POI searches general. It didn't find either of our Aldis when I searched for Groceries but found one when I searched All Shopping (it found the new Aldi and not the old one).

*Bought some screen protectors on eBay for $3.85 (for two), free shipping, 10% Bing cash back, item 330313401779. I also got a car power socket set, item 250475284483 for $4.55, free shipping, 10% Bing. Comes from China so it may take a few days. It has two sockets for the Nuvi and my radar detector which I will mount off to the side to keep the wires away from my radio and
a USB port for my phone.

* I used the circular disk rather than mounting it to the windshield (low crime area) so it's closer. I'll probably just take it with me (thus the screen protectors).

*It's useful for hiking. I set it to Pedestrian and Trip Log. I actually did get lost so I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that I was going 180
degrees in the wrong direction. It showed where my car was, the lake and where I had been.

*It took forever for me to figure out how to manually reorder points. It uses the 'insert" feature to do it!

*Pressing and holding the "bars" lets you see the sats and your accuracy.

*Routes are in both "Where to?" and "Tools". I thought I was going nuts!

This thing really works great. Finds the sats fast and never loses them. I haven't synced my phone yet or tried MSN Direct. I'm saving the 3 months of free MSN for my trip south when the leaves are all gone.

Questions:

Is there any way to make it auto-dim? I suppose it must dim when you put it in your pocket tho. On a long hike it might be best just to turn it off till you need it.

Umm...can't think of any more.

Each to their own, but I use it all the time, and it works great. Ever try a NUVI with Bluetooth and no FM Transmitter? YUCK. Works a lot better when coming through the stereo. But hey, if you want to use the internal quiet speaker, go right ahead.

This was lots of reall good information. Thanks

We used the unit on a 3 day weekend getaway. Nice. Even though we knew where we were going we were able to add a few favorite hiking trailheads etc for later use.

MSN seems to provide decent traffic info for Seattle. Right now I am leaning towards not buying any extended MSN service however.

Funny, my laptop hard drive crashed last week and no data was recoverable. I had not yet moved my Garmin backup file to storage...so lost that.

I just did another backup. I also lost my whole set of custom POI files....got to start grabbing them again.

So far a fun and useful unit. A few navigation quirks but definatly worth the $200.

How does it compare to the 680?
I recently tried a nuvi 755 and wasn't impressed with the directions it was giving me compared to my old 680, it kept making me go other ways home which were longer.

Can you customize a route on this unit to go a specific way?

Where can I find tips and tricks regading this GPS?

Thank you in advance.

This would be a very good place to start;

http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/index.html

...
Questions:

Is there any way to make it auto-dim? I suppose it must dim when you put it in your pocket tho. On a long hike it might be best just to turn it off till you need it.

...

Look here: http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/index.html

Gary is a frequent contributor on this site and he has put together a rather comprehensive list of tips and tricks that apply to most nuvi models, and he regularly makes additions.

Oops, just saw that phranc had suggested the same site. He must type faster then me.

I registered my nuvi and downloaded the 2010.20 map today. Long process but it went without a hitch (other than sucking my computer system resources dry).

I found what seems to be a 12 route limit. My "new" route button was greyed out, until I deleted a route.

I did not realize the number of routes stored was so low.

The specs on the Garmin website say 10 is max.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=13479#specsTab