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December 28, 2006
Garmin nüvi 360 First Impressions
Having received the Garmin nüvi 360 as a Christmas gift, I can say that so far my experience with the device has been overwhelmingly positive. The most stunning aspect of the nüvi is its size. It fits easily in my palm and my pocket (even a jean pocket) and wastes almost no space with hard-wired buttons. This is achieved by its wonderful touch-screen display spanning the full area of the device's front side.
The interface is simple, elegant, and intuitive. The most amazing experience in intuitiveness I have had so far with it is when I decided to try pressing and holding the touchscreen's "Back" button. I had found it slightly annoying that the user has to hit this button several times before finally arriving back at the home screen, and guessed that maybe holding the button down would exit the menu system and return me to the top level of the interface. The nüvi did just that! With almost no time whatsoever spent reading the manual, I was able to discover functions like this in the nüvi's interface and figure out how to do what I wanted on the device.
Another major plus is the nüvi's universality and cooperation with Mac OS X. While the manual and other documentation only display instructions for Windows users, the nüvi is in fact almost 100% compatible with the Mac. I quickly found that connecting the nüvi's USB cable mounted a removable drive on my desktop. This is an invaluable step in the evolution of GPS receivers. Now I can transfer music (which it can play with its built-in speaker) and photos (which it can display on its gorgeous screen) directly to the nüvi's drive, as well as drop new waypoints and POI databases directly into folders within the device's memory.
As if this wasn't enough, the nüvi gets wonderful GPS reception and acquires satellite data almost instantly even indoors. I was getting 14-foot GPS resolution with a roof over my head and only a few windows in the room.
The nüvi also has bluetooth built-in so it can communicate with my phone and even dial numbers associated with POIs and waypoints.
All that said, I do have some complaints about various aspects of the nüvi. First, there is no option to record or display track logs, a feature commonly present on most GPS receivers. Also, there is no capability for communicating via bluetooth to any device other than a phone. It would be awesome to use the nüvi as a GPS receiver for my computer, making Wardriving with the device possible.
Also, it appears the nüvi's Mac compatibility is not quite complete, as whenever I try to eject its removable drive, it pops right back up on my desktop a few seconds later. I have found that unplugging the USB cable immediately after ejecting the drive is a suitable workaround to this issue.
I will be following this post up with another one on my newfound hobby of geocaching (thanks to the nüvi), and how I was able to perfect the process of geocaching with this device.
Posted by Alan Joyce at December 28, 2006 06:07 PM
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Comments
I got a nuvi 350 today and have OSX 10.4.8. Therefore I really excited to read your comments about how well the machine works with Mac. I think the only difference between the 350 and the 360 you have is that mine is not blue tooth compatable.
Thanks so for your other article on geocaching with nuvi and a mac. I really want to be able to do that and your instructions sound easy to follow.
Posted by: Amelia Jordan at January 14, 2007 04:43 PM
Glad you found the articles helpful. Let me know if you run into any problems geocaching with the device and I'd be happy to help.
Posted by: Alan Joyce at January 14, 2007 08:22 PM