Thursday, November 25, 2010

Garmin Nuvi 295w Linux

Links: Tiger Direct pricing


Looking closely at this Garmin below. It appears to have GPS functionality and, near WiFi sources, email and web. That would seem to avoid the necessity for a service plan with a phone provider and I certainly don't want another $$ervice plan. The catch is I'm uncertain how this unit will interact with Linux. I want PC connectability to update maps and download images. If all this works, looks like a nice travel toy for the glovebox.



We'll see. This is a potentially nice toy on sale for around $90. It comes with this in the kit.



limitations
Complaint I'm seeing is this unit appears to drain its battery rapidly. In my experience, battery zapping is a common problem on my cell phone when I'm in wireless mode. So,I'm guessing the Nuvi's WiFi might be always-on by default. This would be additional load to its GPS power needs. Before purchase would want to learn whether it's possible for users to individually control power to these features.