I got my first Garmin street unit. And things aren't so great.

Bought myself the same unit a few months ago to take on vacation to Bryson City, NC from Tampa Bay area. Worked like a charm. Didn't have problem one.

Loaned it to our daughter for a trip to Orlando. Same thing. Worked great.

Don't have any thoughts why yours did what it did.

Nuvi1300WTGPS

Nuvi1300WTGPS@Gmail.com

Sometimes individual units have issues.

So, pack it up and take it back to the retailer you got it from and buy another. You can buy another of the same, or maybe try something else.

both of my units went through the same problem when new. after a couple of resets, they both work fine now

I bought the 1300T and my daughter took it to Europe 2 days later. As far as I know, its been working great for her over there.

I'll just be glad to get it back from her at Christmas!

Oh, and I'll be glad to see her again also.

I have had a similar thing happen with 2 different Garmin units I have owned. The units have always come back on, and worked fine after resetting/rebooting. Maybe you should wait a few days and a few more times for usage before you return it, but it is understood if the frustration level is high you need to act on it.

Electronics do have bad apples. You can't fault a product or a company for a bad apple. It is frustrating but Garmin does make good products most of the time (99.99% of the time). Personally I still think they have the best products. Pack it up return it to the retailer and get a replacement.
Good luck to you.

don't give up I had a bad gps hopfully you can sort it out you'll be glad you did

flip

Well, it's been working all week.

A few things I have noticed, and I am comparing this to my former Magellan 4040 unit.

1. Garmin is much easier to use, hands down. Magellan will never catch up. Never!. The on screen keyboard is easier to use, by far. On the Magellan it was frustrating to use that to enter thing.

2. It's much easier to find pois. I found best buy store by typing only best. It found it.

Inexplicably it couldn't find another retail store I put in. It chugged and chugged and I finally gave up. Maybe it wasn't in there.

2. This particular Garmin unit doesn't turn itself off after a while. My Magellan units all did that, if you didn't move for 15 minutes or so they would go off. The Garmin 1300 stays on until you turn it off. Seems odd that would have been left out, purely a software function. Do other Garmin units shut off automatically if they don't move?

3. The illegal windshield mount is smaller and works better than the mount that came with the Magellans.

I don't know about others but my Nuvi 750 never turns off till I tell it to. I would not like one that turned off as if I am distracted while working with my GPS I want to go back to it in the same state it was when I left.

I think the never turning off is a good thing.

That's a setup item on the Magellan's: 15,30, 60 or never. Maybe it is on the Garmin too....?????

2. 6 million POI is only a fraction of POI in the USA. That's why this site is so helpful.

2. Auto shutoff while plugged in is not a feature I have seen with Garmin. When the power is lost you will get a shut down after 30 seconds on many units unless you choose otherwise. If you are leaving your vehicle I strongly urge you take your unit with or hide it out of view in your vehicle.

3. I use a universal phone/GPS vent mount I got a Walmart for $15. This keeps my view unobstructed while keeping the GPS in easy reach.

Michael

I continue to use the Garmin Nuvi 1300.

I have to say it is *way* easier to use than the Magellan units I have had.

The on screen keyboard is much easier to hit the keys on, you don't have to be nearly as careful when typing, a big advantage when driving.

The search facility is also *way* better, faster and more developed than the Magellan. For example to find the nearest Best Buy I just entered "best" and it found it.

This unit seems to be able to use a GTM25 traffic receiver, which I have seen on ebay for about $70-$90 and have lifetime traffic included. I haven't bought one yet. I am thinking about it.

A hard turn off and turn on in ANY piece of electronic equipment is not good for it. It stresses all of the surge componets built in to absorb voltage spikes in the power supply filters, and as we all know, everything has a finite life.

You heard this where?

Been in electronics for more than 1/2 a century and this is news to me. Surge components get a little worse with every surge they absorb, the larger the surge, the faster they deteriorate. If you have a power strip with surge suppressors built in, they should be replaced every 3 to 4 years. Replace them more quickly if you live in lightening prone areas.

But I've never heard - or seen - any evidence that powering off equipment caused surge components to go bad.

Try a hard reset.
Try contacting Garmin support.

Failing relief from either one of those routes, recognize that unfortunately, every model of every electronic component has a certain percentage (almost always low) of bad units that will fail quickly, as amazon reviews will quickly convince you. They could make these things to go from 97% reliable to 99.9999% reliable early on, but the price would have to be much higher to find and weed out the bad ones, so they let you get a bargain and be the guinea pig. Remember that unhappy customers with bad units are much more likely to post an online review than happy ones, so online reviews do not give you any solid read on the reliability of a particular model. Be thankful it died under warranty, return it, and try again. But try a hard reset and try contacting Garmin first, because the fix may be simple.

I've been in electronics since vacuum tubes.
Garmins have no Internal power supplies. Older ones run off 12 volts and the newer ones' power plug drop the 12 volts down to 5 for the USB connector.
Yanking the plug is the same as turning off the ignition. They may have some caps to clean up the DC and maybe a solid state voltage regulator and a couple of diodes.

Must be just my equipment then...
But I have seen many (ok, at least 2) Compaq computers with blown power supplies with no evidence of other problems

Compaqs used to blow their power supplies fairly regularly, but that was over 25 years ago. Compaq was one of the first to use switching regulators and they had some problems with the capacitors used in them. The design (if I remember correctly) they were using caused voltage spikes if one of the electrolytic caps changed value. We had a similar problem at a mini computer manufacturer back in the mid 70's where the tantalum capacitors on memory boards would "let the smoke out" for seemingly no reason. What was found was the bend the automatic insertion equipment put in the leads would cause the cap and the lead to oscillate if a noise spike occurred. The voltage quickly shot up to well over a 1,000 volts and the little cap was only rated at 50. Almost instant smoke (with a little flame.)

The problems weren't caused by turning the equipment on or off, it was due to power line or induced noise such as from RF or lightening. As a side note, the only way to turn those computers off was with the switch on the side. The BIOS hadn't been set up to do a shutdown - you could "cold boot" but not shut the power off like you can now.

Funny how just a small bend in a componet can create such a havoc.....
Thanks for the insight.

be civil, they want you happy! They will either tell you how to take care of it, or return it. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar...be nice.

As an aside, I always take 2 Garmin with me on trips!

Plate voltage, Grid Bias, Inter-electrode capacitance, directly or indirectly heated cathodes. Makes one nostalgic. Nothing like the warm glow of a Hammarlund or Hallicrafters on a winter's evening.

I looked up the 1300 and it looks great. I love my 765t so will not be getting one anytime soon. The 1300 writeup said that you could "download the optional CityXplorer maps to enable its Pedestrian navigation capability." Sounds like a great feature. Is this feature specific to the 1300 or would I be able to download this map and have pedestrian capability on my 765. thanks.