Garmins new lineup & features

Am curious to see how well that 3D traffic works

Amazon has a deal on one today. I am going to look at this. Maybe it makes sense to wait

Not sure I can even imagine what that is, at least for cars

neat, but will they have an mp3 player... that's my main reason for staying on my 760

edit: just looked at the garmin site, they don't even have the mp3 player as a search option anymore, so I'm guessing that they've abandoned mp3s altogether

I am suspicious that Garmin has an agreement with Audible to not put MP3 players on the new PND's. Why? So you have to purchase Audible's over-priced proprietary audio books (AA format). Garmin does still put the audio book player on some new models. If the device had a general purpose MP3 media player as well, there are many sources for less expensive (even free) audio books.

I have no proof of this, just my suspicious nature I guess.

Did not see any of the new units list MP3 capability. I guess that the built-in MP3 capability on a lot of new cars has killed that.

Did not see any with "Garmin Lock", which I assume is locking with a PIN number. Great for thieves! I hope they tell everyone to take the unit out of the car when not in use.

Like the new features, but why drop the popular ones?

Garmin likely dropped mp3 due to licensing fees. The mp3 codec is owned by Fraunhofer and must be licensed. The alternatives, like LAME, don't allow for commercial use or else they would be used instead.

Serious question regarding Garmin Lock: how popular do you honestly think it is? I'm asking since none of the units in my household have it enabled. Obviously I'm a party of one in this case, but I don't believe Garmin Lock is as popular as you believe it to be. While it theoretically makes things easier for thieves, I suspect that very few Garmin owners even bothered with it.

Very nice. Devices are getting more capable with what they can do now.

They are still nowhere as feature rich as the older street pilots were.

I'm still curious what their future plans are for NuLink. Does anyone know?

nuLink is dead in North America, or so I'm been told by the largest Garmin distributor in Canada. It may live in Europe where it has been accepted much better than it has here but you will probably not see another nuLink GPS released for us.

Thanks for the info.

I guess I'll hang on to my Nüvi 660 for a while longer.

No doubt

How many people use the lock code on their phone?

But even if only ONE person out of a million uses Garmin Lock, why remove it? It costs Garmin nothing to include it in their units!! Yet another example of Garmin removing features for no good reason.

My 660 has the features I want... especially the mp3 player. Plan on keeping it till it dies.

Garmin Lock, despite being rarely used by the userbase, is likely a support desk nightmare, which is why Garmin is removing it for the new models. But, one thing that I believe everyone keeps forgetting is that Garmin Lock is not something that every Garmin unit carried. Before the nüvi, not a single Streetpilot had Garmin Lock, and many of those models were as easily stolen as nüvis are today. So, the status quo as of 2012 will be no different than what it was when the last Streetpilot rolled off the assembly line.

I agree with you that it doesn't cost anything up front to put Garmin Lock in the unit, but it costs Garmin in other areas. They probably looked at the bottom line, which is all any company looks at, saw that too much service time was taken up by resetting locked Garmins to default, and decided to get rid of Garmin Lock.

Garmin would disagree with you that Garmin Lock was removed for "no good reason". I cannot agree nor disagree with your assessment since I really don't care one way or another. I don't use Garmin Lock, just as I don't use the pattern lock in Android.

This has been discussed in previous threads and it's all a matter of choice to lock or not to lock.

I lock mine. I work 2 blocks from a Homeless camp under a bridge. I used to leave my 660 in the truck, in the console, but heat caused a premature battery failure, so now it goes inside my workplace every day.

No need for the pin now, except that someone at work could take a liking to it. You never know.

It does cost some memory for the code, though. So it does cost something - but not much.

Having to send it in to get it unlocked, if you forgot the PIN, is probably the biggest hassle. I think that is done to thwart thieves, as I'm sure that it is only returned to the address in the database - if it's registered.

You can not buy these new nuvis.

It is not a matter of whether or not they are in stock.

They have not even been "released" - according to amazon.com

Released has several different contexts. Released may mean the manufacturer has not received any units from their supplier. It may mean they have not received sufficient quantity to ship to dealers or it may mean the dealers are not to sell the units until they receive a message "releasing" their hold. So which release is it here? It may very well be the first one in that they haven't received units from the supplier or it could mean as someone else speculated serious problems were discovered in the earlier shipments so a new batch has to be received.

Then, there's always the marketing angle of building a demand through advertising before making the units available to "insure a successful launch."

From the Original Garmin Press Release Announcing these New Units:

See that "expected to be available in October 2011"? My calendar is still on September.

Not the features I was hoping for