Sunday, August 1, 2010

Garmin nüvi 255W Crashes On Choosing A Favorite POI

Garmin nüvi 255W GPS
I recently bought a recertified Garmin nüvi 255W GPS from NewEgg.com - I've only had it a week and since I don't have a car yet, I've only tested it by using it on the bus and while walking; seems to be working fine so far.

Except for one thing – sometimes, when I selected a destination, the unit would inexplicably crash – it would just turn off. The first couple of times, I wrote it off as a random glitch and got the software update that was available at myGarmin. But that didn’t solve the problem.

I finally noticed that this only happened when I selected the entry for my home (saved in my favorites list). And it would only happen when I went through the steps really quickly. And when it did happen, the thumbnail for the entry hadn’t loaded completely on screen. That’s right, I had a photo of the apartment complex entrance set for this favorite POI.

So as it turns out, it seems that if you have a big image – mine is about 1.5 MB – you’ll likely have a problem. Reducing the size of the image or not associating a photo with the POI seems to fix the problem.