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.
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Hey--i'm randomly looking at the same device, and for most of the exact same reasons as yourself.
According to a site i've been looking at, you can disable both the Wi-Fi and the GPS (checking that last) functionalities.
Here's that site: http://gpstracklog.com/2010/06/garmin-nuvi-295w-review.html
It's not exactly menu-intuitive to get there, though. I also like that battery is user replaceable, on a different topic.
Thanks for the link. Appears hard to go wrong for this price. I guess I'd turn off Wi-Fi unless needing to check email; maybe I could extend battery life. Did you decide to buy? I'll post here again with additional notes if I buy.
This is going to be slightly scattered--I apologize about that (It's about 1 AM EST, and I'm thinking about multiple tasks, as I am wont to do).
Anyway, I decided to buy it after all. It was a good purchase, I feel, but then I buy niche things like this. I would like to work with it to make it better (on the Linux end) but I'm not adept at doing that kind of assembly (I assume) code.
The batteries are found elsewhere, btw.
Besides the browser being crap, I am unable to connect to a WPA-2 Enterprise Wireless Network--otherwise I would be taking it with me everywhere.
That particular specification is what my university uses. Shame about that, but it doesn't see the enterprise wpa2 networks. My apartment's wpa2 personal works just fine, however.
Hope that update helps. On a different topic, your tagline says something about slackware--is that just talk (no offense intended) or truth?
I should
Pardon my ignorance about your Linux experience.
I'd be interested in learning more about your experience and such--I suppose you might have an About... page somewhere, too.
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