Laptop GPS World

I recently acquired mobile pc. I have many waypoints from Nroute that I would love to pull in as custom poi groups. The help file with mobile pc has zero help in the help section. Could someone tell me where mobile pc expects to find these files?? I tried using POI loader and a gpx file named for a group of my waypoints..but keep getting a error related to MS Vista.
Any insight would be appreciated.

You don't say what the Vista error says but when trying to get 2 or more programs working together in Vista, I find it is best (necessary?) to run the program as administrator. Instead of just clicking on the icon, right click and choose "Run as administrator". Worth a try anyway.

Glenn

I run Vista, but have no problems with using the Garmin POI loader.

I moved a bunch of waypoints (about 190, I think) into my trial version of Mobile PC without using the POI Loader. I used Mapsource. I opened the GPX file containing the waypoints in Mapsource. That put them in the Waypoints tab in Mapsource. With Mobile PC running I used the TRANSFER > SEND TO DEVICE function in Mapsource to transfer them into Mobile PC.

I have never tried working with custom POI groups so I can't help with the grouping. I just wanted to get the waypoints transferred from my Garmin iQue 3600 PDA into Mobile PC for testing. My trial period for Mobile PC has run out so I can't do anything else at the moment, sorry.

EDIT: Ooops, forgot to mention that this was under Vista on my laptop.

...ken...

I can get the waypoints into Mobile PC but they come out in the "Favorites" section. Which is frustrating..since under manage my data in the tools section you can assign a category..but when you go favorites to route to one of them..there doesn't appear to be a way to select the category. So far the only way I've worked around this problem is to give unique first word to each way point name i.e. Hotel Sheraton Hotel Holiday Inn. That way when you type hotel in the search box they come up by themselves. I'm retired and drive a taxi...and having to constantly specify a city and state to route to an address is annoying...at least my magellan maestro 3100 had a previous city list. I like mobile PC but data entry and management didn't get a lot of thought when they wrote it. In the Manage my data section has a custom poi's section and NOT one bit of help on how to use it. I like it a lot better than Nroute which could make no use of the touchscreen features of my laptop. It would have been great if they had put a keyboard screen the way most self contained gps units do. Hope these comments help others considering this program.

As soon as I get my copy of Mobile PC I'll try to remember to take a look at the issue of searching categories in Favorites.

There are at least a couple of others in here who have commented on which onscreen keyboard they are using for their touchscreens. If I recall correctly there have been two or three mentioned that seem to work okay with Mobile PC on computers with a touchscreen. I don't have a touchscreen so I didn't pay much attention. So you would have to take a peek through some of the threads here.

...ken...

To search your favourites by category, click on add filter at the top of the list. You then get 3 choices; By Name, By Symbol and By Category.
Click the By Category button and you can choose the existing categories or ones you have set up.
Terry

howdy all,

i just got mobile pc. i want to load custom poi's and have an icon show up for them. when i load the poi, it shows up twice and the icon doesnt work so i actually dont know where it is putting them. i called garmin, but they were no help. the tech guy said he didnt know the new mobile pc program and was going to email how to do it to me, but never did. i am using the poi loader progam.

i must be doing something wrong.

some help please?

thanks

tom

Garmin makes great receivers..but the help file with mobile pc and tech support is awful. However, I found a pdf help file for Mobile XT that came from my Nroute Disk. It was a great help in running mobile pc..i.e. I found out from it that you custom POI's can be accessed under the EXTRAS section of where to( the helpfile within Mobile PC said nothing) . You can find the pdf on the Garmin Web site. Hope you can find it..it was some what helpful. Also I have yet to find a way to route to a POI at a distant place and make it the end point of the route...I live in New Hampshire and want to route to a hotel in California..
I can't figure out how to make it look for hotels in CA and not my local area.

Here's a link to the Garmin Mobile XT Owners Manual.

One thing to keep in mind is what Mobile XT calls "My Locations" are called "Favorites" in Mobile PC. There are other minor differences, too, but at least this is better than Mobile PC's built-in Help. It has pictures and everything.

...ken...

i have done what it says there. still dont know how to get it to use the icon file that comes with the custom poi's. also, how to get it to stop showing everything twice.

any hints here?

thanks

tom

I make deliveries to multiple locations of the same companies different locations..when I go to one the first time I save it as a favorite. Then later I pull the favorites in to map source...I "cut" them from mapsource to memory..then open the mapsource file I have for that companies delivery points and paste the news one I had cut and save that file again as a gph file. Then I save them again as a gpx file. BEFORE I use POI loader I go to Mobile PC's poi directory and delete the poi file for that company. And start Mobile PC to be sure they are gone. Then using poi loader I load the GPX file (generally I only keep the one poi gpx file in the load from directory..Ones that I have not modified and don't need to load again I keep in a different directory for future reloads if Necessary). When it's loaded I go to the Mobile PC POI directory and change the file name to something different. The POI Loader gives the same generic file name everytime...so if you don't change the name...then it overwrites and you can lose what you did before. Then you can start Mobile PC and you should see your new poi file under the "extras" section. I know this sounds confusing and a lot of steps but It works for me. I also have had zero luck with getting my icons (red push pins) to show up as they are supposed to. They always come up as little grey dots for me.

I finally figured out how to find a poi at a distant location...say in a far off city.. Do a where to then lodging then "hotel/motel " the select the near button..but then you have to select "near other" the "spell city" where you can type in the city name from a list. I for the life of me can't figure out why you always have to go thru so many steps. Even working in the same area you always have to put the city in every time you want to find something. Wish they would put a "previous city" button to pick from the citys you have routed to before. Hope this helps other newbies..you ol' timers may not need the help.