Garmin NUVI GPS

[hhfarang]

I thought there was a thread about GPS devices already but I searched on "gps" and got no results. I know Index sells the Nuvi. I was wondering if there is any other place in Hua Hin that sells them so I can check for the best price before making a purchase.

I checked the (very impressive) new IT mall on the third floor of the old Hua Hin Shopping Mall yesterday but couldn't find anyone selling them there.

Thanks

[mo1]

try the book store at Market village I think still sell them there

[Norseman]

The bookshop 3rd floor in Market Village (close to the Cinema) sells them.
I bought a Nuvi 205 end of last month to a cost of 4.900 Baht.
It works perfect!!

[hhfarang]

Thanks Norseman and mo1. The 205 is 6,800 baht at Index so the book store sounds like a much better deal!

[barrys]

Saw them in Tesco Lotus Pranburi a couple of weeks ago!!

[hhfarang]

Thanks Barry, didn't notice the price did you?

[Norseman]

Wherever you buy a Garmin GPS I guess you only get the manual in Thai language.
Go to http://www8.garmin.com/support/userManual.jsp
and download your English version, a Adobe Reader .pdf file.
Then it's a piece of cake to set-up your GPS.

[barrys]

Hi hhfarang

I'm afraid I can't remember exactly - but pretty sure it was around 5k, with the widescreen version a bit more expensive.

You can also take a look at www.gadgettrend.com - they're also advertising the 205 at 4,900 baht!

Don't worry too much about having/buying the very latest Thailand map, either. You can get them via BitTorrent.

[hhfarang]

Ok, here's the tale of me and my new Nuvi. I'm writing it here in the hope of saving someone else a sleepless night thinking they just threw away 5k baht.

I bought the Nuvi 205 at the bookstore on the top floor of Market Village for 4,900 baht (1900 baht less than the same device at Index) as Norseman said. Got it home and started looking through the package and also, like Norseman said everything is in Thai so I downloaded both the quick start manual and the full operating manual from the Garmin site. The only thing in the box that was in English (and Thai) was a little slip of paper that said "Please do not download the English OS from Garmin Web Site and install it on Thai OS nuvi".

Ok, warning heeded. I turned on my Nuvi and everything was in Thai. With my wife's help I navigated through the menu and found a selection to change the menu language, text language, the voice language to English. Now I can read the screen and navigate the menus. So far so good.

Now I started playing with the functions like finding the location of stuff like restaurants or even cities like Bangkok and everything on the map and mapping lists were still in Thai. I searched through all the menus and could find no way to change the map program to English so I went online to the Garmin site and found that you could buy the Thai map (not from Garmin but from a company called ESRI in Bangkok. Needless to say that didn't make me happy. I found a CD in the box and started looking at what was on it. Nothing made immediate sense.

I fooled around with it a while and finally went to bed and tossed all night angry about the mix up. I went to the shop this morning without my wife. No one there spoke English but the girl using hand signals assured me I could change it to English by using a USB cable and the enclosed CD. The cable did not come with the machine and the book store does not sell them. I looked at the connection port in the back of the Nuvi and it is not the normal ones you see on a typical USB cable so you will probably have to buy one at a computer store if you want to do anything between the Nuvi and the computer. The port shape looked familiar to me so I was pretty sure I had the cable.

Got home and sure enough, the cable that came with my Canon digital camera was the one needed for the Nuvi so I plugged it in and put in the CD. I found folders on the CD that indicated files in en and th so I went into the en folder and found a file called gmapprom.img which I also found in a folder on the Nuvi itself viewing it as a drive using my computer. I renamed the gmapprom.img in the Nuvi to gmapprom.img.th to keep from losing anything and in case my wife ever wants to use it in Thai and then I coppied the gmapprom.img file from the CD to the aforementioned folder in my Nuvi.

A few minutes later the copy finished I unplugged my Nuvi (correctly using the disconnect device icon on the computer) and turned it on... and voila! everything, including the mapping, destinations, and points of interest are now in English.

Hope this helps in case anyone else runs into this. There are no English instructions included on how to accomplish this task and my wife being not very technical could not find any Thai instructions in the supplied booklet on it either. I took a wild guess as I have a computer background and it turned out to be correct but for less technical people this would have been an even bigger headache; however, the girl at the shop indicated (I think) that if I would go get a compatible cable and bring everything back to her, she would go across the hall to the TOT internet shop and use one of their computers to change it to English. By that time I had an idea that I could figure it out so I just went back home and did it myself.

Happy navigating!

[Norseman]

Good story HHF!!
I'm happy you finally made it and maybe next time you remember to look for the little sticker saying: English Map Language instead of Thai language!

[hhfarang]

...maybe next time you remember to look for the little sticker saying: English Map Language instead of Thai language!

They don't have the English ones right now in the 205. I asked to exchange and they said they only had the (pre-loaded) English map version in the 205w which has a bigger screen and is more expensive.

I think you got the last English 205.