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    Lessons Learned After Two Years of Marriage
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    Garmin Nuvi 350/360


    Created on Thursday, August 14, 2008        Bookmark and Share

    Home -> Geeky Stuff -> Gadgets



    ** 9/6/2008 Update: I've gotten a ton of traffic from google for people trying to find out why their unit has lost satellite reception. I have my own theory on this as mine did for a while to. There is hope! Check here to see my theory. Please tell me about your experiences using the comments section at the bottom of the page.
    ** 11/18/2008 Update: I'm feeling better about my theory after going out of town last weekend. I got sick of seeing my cord hanging out the front of my dashboard so I had a local company run it behind my dash to the back of the fusebox. I had to get a rental car last weekend for an out-of-town trip and I had yet to buy a replacement power cord for the nuvi so I ended up using my blackberry's cigarette lighter adapter instead. Sure enough, I did see weirdness. At times I did see "Lost Satellite Reception" but not like I had before. The error that I saw most of the time was that it thought I had connected it to the computer, which is odd. I found that plugging it in while the unit said "loading maps" seemed to do the trick. As soon as the unit got back to its original power adapter I saw none of these errors again.
    ** 5/3/2009 Update: I experienced the "lost satellite" error again even though the unit is permanently connected directly to the car's fusebox. Nothing at all had changed in many months. To fix it, I disconnected it from the power cord and held down the reset button for 30 seconds. I then powered it back up using battery only and let it sit on the dashboard for 15 minutes (once again, running on batteries). I came back and it had found the satellites had been acquired and I've been running fine ever since.
    ** 4/20/2010 Update: I have not had the "lost satellite" issue in over a year after powering the unit fully using its wall plug adapter and using the cigarette lighter adapter that came with it. Once again, I had seen the error somewhat frequently for the better part of a year. i see some debate on the fixya.com page. I don't know who is right but you might want to try this solution before sending your unit anywhere. If this worked for you (or even if it didn't), please let us know by leaving a comment below.


    This is my third garmin unit. I currently own the handheld Vista CX and I previously owned an older Garmin unit that I sold to a friend to purchase this one.

    The 360 is the same as the 350 except for the bluetooth speaker that is part of the 360. I've read mixed reviews of this function. I did try it a couple of times and it sounded like I was in a tunnel but this could have had something to do with the fact that my nuvi is in the console of my car.

    The first thing I noticed about this unit is that it works in the console of my Mazda 6! As you can see in the pic below, I ran the power wire through the back of my console to the fuse box so that I don't have to run the power adapter down the front of my console. Not only does it work in the console, it works in my garage. That's how powerful the gps sensor in this unit is (and why some reviews claiming otherwise are laughable).

    Lost Satellite Reception

    The one complaint that people have about this unit is that it seems to get confused when you go on a plane and turn it on hundreds of miles away. For some reason it struggles to get satellite reception and gives a "lost satellite reception" message. I did see this for the first time on our last trip. The unit worked fine for a few days and then one day we got this message. I have a theory on this one: I wonder if the rental wasn't properly powering the device. When we got back from vacation the unit showed that it had half of a full charge. A couple days later, the unit would work maybe half the time. After a week or so everything was back to normal and it has been that way ever since. If you see this problem I recommend bringing the unit inside and plugging it into a wall charger for a while.

    If you're looking to buy a gps I highly recommend this unit. It works right out of the box and does not require you to hook it up to a pc nor does it have an antenna.



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