Garmin nuvi 255 (2009)

Halfway watching Warehouse13, my Wife told me there is a GPS unit that needs to be "prepared". Apparently, someone got somebody to get something from somewhere so that it can be used anywhere over here. Got it? No? Don't ask.

Anyway, this is the Garmin 255, the supposedly latest version and my second Garmin unit for me to play with. So this also proves that compared to a GPS enabled Mobile phones (especially a certain Nokia model, no, not the 5800), the Garmin units are still popular. But we shall soon see in a few month's time. Anyway, there is not much to say here as the pictures will speak for themselves. Oh, if they're not too talkative, you can always read the caption instead. Ha ha.

And so, this is the nuvi out from the box.
Notice the clear and crisp display on the screen.

Included in the box would be the usual obligatory
instruction manual telling you there's no wall
charger or any memory card, the stand for the
car and ............ well, that's it.

Note the clear and crisp display of the nuvi
LCD screen as seen from various angles.
Note the side slot for the microSD card you
need to buy (if you want to feel complete).
Note the screen after I peel off the clear and
crisp faux display protective plastic.

Anyway, since its late at night and I am not going
to run down to the car and plug the charger into
the cigarette lighter socket, I used a PC PSU to
emulated a car charger unit and left it overnight

Halfway, when it has the necessary power,
I turned it on to see if there is anything I
can set in the unit.

This is not applicable indoors and it is also
not adviseable to go out at night with the
unit in case you trip over the cat and fall.

And as a result, like all GPS units, it is hard
to get any Satellite reception when indoors.

Tuning to the View Map segment, it is surprising
to see the last coordinates in Singapore. Maybe it
was trying to lock-on with limited Satellite signals

Moving about, the World Map, it has a rough
detail about Malaysia. Because when you
zoom in, there's nothing there.

So, we go to Australia.........

Aha!

Anyway, I decided to play with the diagnostic screen
as what all engineers would do when there is nothing
else to play with since the Intenet was so slow these
past few days, getting a 75MB file from MalfreeMaps
was like forever, which is surprising.

But one thing I like to say is that the
General screen is quite nice. You can
see the hills and the mountains.

Anyway, by this morning, the file is ready and I
plugged the nuvi to the PC which acts like a USB
memory drive. You can see the bottom icon.

Yep, Windows XP recognises it. So I don't have
to rush out to get a microSD card. Phew.

So I took it outdoors and turned the unit on.
And in less than 20 seconds, the nuvi locked-on
to a few satellites and its up and running.

Yep, the Malaysia map is running. But for the
Taiwan map, I think its better to get it there
since Garmin is very very popular there.

Why the name GARMIN? Find out here.