NUVI 250W -Getting started.

Yes, you can use the custom POI's.

Call Garmin & ask for the map DVD.

~John

Welcome, Navyman. What did you do in the Navy?

Garmin has Full manuals for all their units available for Download. They are in PDF format and even easier to read than the paper one. You do not need the Map DVD. You can hook your Nuvi to your Computer it will recognize it as a Disk drive, and you can back up the entire unit to your computer in case it gets messed up and you need to replace anything. also you can download free from the Garmin Site POI loader, and Webupdater. Both very good programs run the updater and it will see if there is any new Software updates for your Nuvi. Then keep reading and Searching here..and you will soon be an expert..

Garmin does not offer manuals for the nüvi 2xx. Only a Set Up and Go Guide that gives the most basic info.

AFAIK, there is NO detailed owner's manual for the nuvi 250W. That frustrated me, too. Had to go all over the place to get info.

There is, however, a nice list of the 250W's capabilities on the Garmin site. Go to , and click on the Specs tab. For example, it tells you flat-out that the 250W will handle custom POIs -- a fact that is oddly not mentioned in the Quick Start booklet you got with your unit.

Good luck. With the POIs I've downloaded here, this unit proved quite capable on our first trip with it.

Let me try posting that link again. It disappeared from my earlier reply:

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&pID=9121

Ironically, I was a navigator on a P3 Orion aircraft. I spent many hours calculating star shots to get what the Off/On switch on my Nuvi can do in seconds.

Yeah, celestial nav is the pits. I remember that class at the Naval Academy. Sucks when you get a capital "I" for a fix!! I think the P-3 guys still use celestial nav. I wonder why they even bother these days with GPS, INS, radar coverage, ground based navaids, etc.

I was an SH-60B Seahawk pilot...and never celestial nav'd beyond USNA.

Thanks to this site and you folks, in the past 24 hours I have downloaded POI Loader and learned how to use the Mapsource program I got with my eTrex legend to input my favorite Mom & Pop coffee shop into my Nuvi 250W.