Wednesday, September 17, 2008

I love My Garmin Nuvi 260!


Today, I was driving home from work in Sunnyvale and had to make a stop over at Costco to get a birthday cake. I was pushing through traffic on 237, on my way to my usual Costco on Hostetter Road in San Jose. I'd have to continue on 237 going East becoming Calaveras, then merge onto 680 South and exit Hostetter Road. Long trek, yeah? Not with my Garmin Nuvi!

I know I shouldn't have been doing this, but as I was driving I grabbed Garmin out of the glove box, switched it on, and typed in a search for nearby Costcos in my current area. It found one off of Lawrence Expressway approximately 2.8 miles away. Sweet! I clicked on the address, then clicked "GO!" snapped Garmin in place on my new sandbag stand and away I went!

It pin pointed where ever I was on 237 and gave me turn-by-turn directions with audio on where to go, assisted with a nice map that highlighted my route in hot pink.

I took Garmin with me on travel a few weeks ago in Indiana. It took me from the Indianapolis Airport to Bloomington, to Crane, and back to Indianapolis with no problems. It did take a few minutes to coordinate with the satellites to find my position, but it sure saved me time from getting lost!

I've had Garmin for about three months now (my parents bought it as a birthday present). I don't use it every week. I'd say I've used it a total of 8 to 10 times to get me to and from unfamiliar places. There were two occasions when Garmin took forever to locate the satellites. One was from my house in Milpitas and I'm not exactly sure why that happened. The other time I was in an area in San Jose coming from Garrod Farms and I was trying to get to University Chicken in Santa Clara and it never communicated with the satellites.

Come to think of it, I do remember another occasion when I was trying to find the shortest route from work to my gym, Bally Total Fitness, in San Jose on Capitol Expressway. I did a search for Bally Total Fitness and it couldn't find it! It did find some in SoCal thought...haha!

Okay, so it's not perfect and I guess I have to give Garmin some more time to prove itself to me. It did save my ass in Indiana and it did help me save gas today taking me to a Costco nearby.

3 comments:

doggz said...

Does it come with a real-time traffic feature? The nav on my car has one and it's been a real lifesaver.

Lorace said...

Unfortunately it doesn't. I wonder if I can somehow upgrade my device with one. Which model do you have?

doggz said...

Mine came with the car from the factory (it's called MyGig), but I know it uses the Sirius radio subscription to get the traffic info.