Garmin with POI already installed

All the Garmins come with some preloaded data for restaurants, gas stations, ATM and the like. The data preloaded isn't always the most current nor is it always the business location. Many of the addresses are mailing addresses that are homes or other places listed on the license or other information taken from listings put out by a third party.

Files downloaded from POI-Factory are the actual locations of the business based on the street address of the physical brick-n-mortar building.

Guessing it depends on how literally you want to define POI. The POI's that "we" have control over are not pre installed. FourSquare is built into the program, but.. they are points of interest. And.. has a pretty extensive data base to call on.

ok, I am looking at the Garmin site and I see some the GPS have a generic icon for food or gas, some may have 1 or 2 actual icons present.
The Ford Nav system my neighbor has displays all actual icons for the gas and food places. This to me seems great because you can actually see what the place is.

So with Garmin you will have to download all poi's icons if this is what I am looking for correct?
Is there 1 all encompassing file for most of these gas restaurants and shops (Walmart, Home Depot etc.) or will I need to download all individually?
thanks

Homer, Garmin GPS's come preloaded with over 6 million poi's. That's a lot of poi's. Categories are many - food, fuel, hospitals, police and many, many more. Is that your question?

Phil

almost...are the poi's displayed as a generic symbol or the actual business logo? It's great to see a poi on the screen while driving but to actually see the symbol...like In N Out is better.
I have an older nuvi 40 LM and am sourcing out a new Garmin...just trying to make certain I choose wisely

Chances are good that your neighbors car nav system uses the HERE map database which is the same one Garmin uses in their automotive GPS units. Most nationally branded gas stations, restaurants, fast food joints, hotels etc. have their copyrighted POI icons preloaded in this database.

As mentioned above, the database is prone to errors and must be updated frequently to have the most current information. Most dealers charge a fee to update automobile nav systems whereas the Garmin LM GPS updates are free.

ok, make sense now.
So, in order for standalone Garmin users to have the 'fancy' icons for restaurants, gas etc. we need to load the poi's.

Is there no place/file where all these poi's are concatenated so we dont have to download individually?

Sorry, but you'll need to download and install each that you want. But then, do you want all gas stations, restaurants, etc? I'd fear the the map would end up all icons and it'd be hard to see the forest (streets) for the trees (icons) in medium sized and larger cities. Also, remember that The Factory's POI files are oftentimes being revised and you should want to keep current so you'd always be updating.

Note that for custom icons to go with your custom POI files, you'll separately need to download and properly name a bmp icon file for each custom POI file you want:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/4359

The above link talks of making icons but note that The Factory has many ready-made icons to download and use:

http://www.poi-factory.com/gps-icons

Also, now that Garmin GPS devices are coming with larger screens, greater pixel densities, etc., icons are oftentimes available in different sizes and you may need to experiment to see which best suits your eyes and device. Good luck.

PS: if you haven't been welcomed yet, welcome to The Factory. Stick around, there's a lot to learn here to maximize your use of your new device.

Great information, thank you all very much for the insight.

On my 1390T where I have the size of map set I don't see any icons at all. But, if I zoom in to 300m on the map I get some icons showing up. But, if I zoom in to 200m, I see just about every icon there is on the street. Sometimes the whole street is just filled with icons of every store, restaurant and gas station or any pre-loaded POI.