Idle State

It's true. Believe it or not. Our dog (Afghan puppy named Dylan) managed to render my GPS completely useless by attempting to eat it.

I blame Garmin. Really. If they hadn't made the leather carry case quite so inviting with it's fresh leather "this smells like it probably has lots of tasty flesh inside it" odour then it might not have been subject to the oversized-puppy equivalent of a ram raid.

Either that - or Dylan took exception to the strange small box that kept speaking with a female American accent and very sloppy diction - which is perfectly understandable.

I did a quick web search and found some guy who's cockatoo had eaten his GPS... so it's not the first time animals have viewed GPS' as tasty morsels.

So my month old Garmin Nüvi 310 ended up with a cracked touch screen - the cracks starting in the bottom corner, from where it was incised by a canine tooth, radiating pretty much across the entire screen. Now you need the touch screen (which is normally excellent, by the way) to do virtually everything on this unit which left it, as I said, completely useless.

Needless to say, I was reasonably annoyed about having almost brand new but non functioning GPS. Particularly in Qatar where navigation is a challenge at the best of times, streetnames and numbers are not well used even when they do exist and it's easy to get trapped in one-way hell.

BTW - the Nüvi 310 is a great little addition to my Jeep - I'm very impressed with it. It's great value for money. Along with standard GPS stuff, it has a bunch of other features - like:

• Bluetooth handsfree for your mobile.
• MP3 player
• Flash card slot
• Clocks, calculators, unit converters etc

Here are details of the box from Garmin's Web Site.

Stuff I do and don't like about the Nüvi 310...

Menu navigation is very responsive and the touch screen is accurate. However, the actual navigation is crap. I have to back out of menus and into others to achieve stuff. (I should be able to get to a map from any screen since this is the primary function of the unit.) Sometimes extra options are provided on another screen. For instance, when making a phone call - why not just put all the call controls together on one screen? The positions of the "Back" and "Done" buttons are not consistent. Some options are not easy to find (setting the time zone, for example).

Volume Control The audible navigation, hands free phone and MP3 player all need independent volume controls. For fairly obvious reasons.

MP3 Player is pretty good. It doesn't seem to respect volume settings embedded in the MP3 file itself though. The volume control needs to be on the MP3 controls page rather than another "click" away.

Suction Cup Mount Why do people make these? They don't work. Find a better way.

Petrol Stations It knows where the closest Petrol Station is. Golf Courses as well. All very cool stuff.

Garmin Support is achingly slow. It took several weeks for them to respond to me despite the web site saying they would respond within 3 days. The knowledge base is half hearted at best - I had to ask a question which really should have been on the knowledge base and then wait two weeks for the answer. The trouble ticket system doesn't play well with Firefox.

Product Documentation is pretty weak - in the fashion of Apple Documentation. The font is lovely but the content is thin on the ground. The manual, for instance, refers you to the web site for more detailed specs. The web site content isn't that much more comprehensive than the manual specs though. Try finding out the maximum size for the removable flash memory... (it's 2GB on the 310, by the way).

How to repair a GPS that your dog has tried to eat.

Originally, I sent a request to Garmin asking for the price to replace the screen. A couple of weeks later, Garmin replied to me, asking me what the problem was, when I had purchased the unit, what the damage was and so on. They also suggested recalibrating the screen. Some of the information requested seemed a little redundant since the already supplied serial number was registered with most of this information. Nevertheless, I duly replied and then received what must be the stupidest technical support response ever:

Dear Campbell,

Try a hard reset, that should cure the problem. Follow the prompts on the attachment.

Thank you for contacting Garmin(Europe)Ltd.

Kind regards

Garmin (Europe) Ltd
______________________________________________________________

Original Message Follows: ------------------------
Hi,

The touch part of the screen is cracked so it is not a recalibration issue.  The LCD proper and backlight work fine...

Sigh.

Fortunately, Al-Lingawi, the local Garmin reseller here in Qatar were completely on the ball. They said that the unit could be replaced for a cost of about 40% of the new purchase price. I turned up at the shop, paid the money, and was given a completely new unit - all in the space of about 15 minutes. So I'm happy again.

Kudos Lingawi. By the way - if you're in Qatar and looking for a GPS unit (or fishing tackle, for that matter) the guys at Al-Lingawi are always really helpful.

So the moral of the story... If you're going to buy Garmin, make sure that the guys you are buying from have got the support base covered. And keep your dog away from it.

Back to 25° 41' 37.75" N 51° 30' 33.16" E.