1490t Media PLayer;

No that is one of the features not being made available with the newer units.

You will have to listen to your CD payer,radio ,Ipod or phone if it is equipped....

That is kind of what I figured. Are there anyways to add features (hack) a Nuvi or is it pretty much what you get out of the box is all you are going to get? It seems with a Micro SD slot, It would be cool if you could ad the software to the card and the Nuvi could access the card.

This is, I think, an example of a manufacturer attempting to reduce costs. Sales are down and profit margins are down. So Garmin is attempting to reduce costs by not paying the licensing fees needed to offer MP3 decoding. You might also have noted that most of the newer NUVI's don't have external speaker/earphone jacks or FM transmitters.

In my opinion, this is counter productive. The have taken the attitude that they can't beat the cell phone/OEM GPS market so they are going to try to get as much out of the market as they can. Instead of making the units more attractive they have crippled them to the point where I will NOT be buying another Garmin.

Well, I do understand many people have the need to listen to their own particular audio programming. But, it is very unlikely now a day to drive a car that has no means to play audio files other than GPS.

When I buy a stand alone GPS, I want it to do one thing well, get me from point a to point b without any other distraction. If I want to have all other features packed in one units, I might as well just use my Droid X.

Well, that is your choice. I have two cars, the oldest is a 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis with an AM/FM cassette player. No audio input for playing audio from external devices. My second car is a 2006 Toyota Corolla with an AM/FM 6 disk CD player. No external audio on it either.

But that isn't the only problem. If I have the windows down on either car, I can't hear the audio prompts through that little 0.25 watt, 1" speaker mounted on the back of my 750. So I'm constantly taking my eyes off the road to read my GPS. Not really a safe thing to do in heavy traffic.

As I stated in the past, my wife and I like to listen to audio books while on long trips. With my 750, I have one device that satisfies my needs. With the new Garmins, I need would a GPS as well as a MP3 player and a patch cord. All of which I would need to secure so they didn't float around and get in the way.

I love my 755t mainly for the features that suit me which includes the mp3 player.
I think it’s great to pop in an SD Card into my GPS and listen to my music via the GPS.

How are they going to sell the $500+ model if your 5" screen can also play jingles?

I am wondering if there is a way to get it to play a ring, or other media tone when, for example, it reaches a POI.

Has anyone been able to do something like this, especially with customized POIs?

Thanks.

The 1490T will play WAV audio files as alerts. Most Custom POI sound files here also include a wav version. You need sox.exe in your POI loader folder on your computer. Make sure you name the wav file with the exact same name as the POI file. Use manual setting on POI Loader to set the proximity distance and check proximity alerts box. There is a FAQ here on how to do this with the Garmin.

See http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25730 for sox.exe and wav files.

If they reduce features they reduce (or in many cases) do not increase the price.

As consumers, we really need to stop believing this hooey. Electronics have reached a point, where most of the retail cost is pure profit.

If your go to Ioffer you can purchase audio books on mp3 for a reason cost.

The more popular consumer electronics products are torn down by companies like iSuppli (Google: "isuppli teardown") and I always find it fascinating to find out from free excerpts of these reports what the estimated Bill of Materials cost of a device is. For example, a Samsung Galaxy Tab costs about $215 for parts and manufacturing. Unfortunately free information is available for only high-profile devices, like new Smart Phones, and not lowly dedicated GPSr devices. A wild guess would be a 4" GPSr should cost less than $60 to manufacture. I have no idea what map and software (e.g. MP3 decoding) licensing costs are, so it is difficult to figure what the true retail markup is. It's not 100% pure profit, but it is still a lot.

Friend, what I said was "where most of the retail cost is pure profit."

Have another read at my post.

And, I'd well imagine a Garmin is at $80 max cost for manufacturing these days at the top end of the line. MAXIMUM. Automation is a little Oil Well that pumps $$$ 24/7...

An iPhone 4 is something like $167 or so.

I have a Nuvi 885t that has the mp3 and the ability to play through my aux. port on my radio.
This allows intigration with my bluetooth phone, music and gps from one port and not having to switch or press buttons to use the hands free features.
If Garmin continues to go in the direction they seem to be headed, they will lose me as a customer, if these features are kept off of future units