Points of Interest (POI) on a GPS

Whenever someone asks me about the various GPS units that I've used/tested, one of the questions that often comes up is "How many points of interest are included in the GPS?"

For me, the included points of interest aren't very important. I've been using various GPS units for about 5 years and I rarely use the included points of interest. What I find more important is the ability of the GPS to accept new points of interest (POI).

This leads me to the website that I use for my points of interest. The website that I use is POIfriend.com or POIfriend.ca. From this website, you can not only create your own points of interest but you can also download the points of interest that others have created onto your GPS. The website supports various GPS formats including Garmin and TomTom.

Generally speaking, you should download the POIs identified as being "Official." These official POIs are made by the company. For example, Tim Hortons has their official POI *HERE*. For a list of the "Official" POIs, you can click *HERE*.

As a test, I created a set of POIs for TD Canada Trust in the Montreal region. If you also deal with TD Canada Trust and live in the Montreal region, you can download my POI for TD Canada Trust *HERE*. If you bank at Royal Bank (RBC), you can find their official POI for Canada *HERE* (they have other official POIs on the site so depending on your needs, you might want to do a search for "RBC") or if you bank at CIBC, you can find their official POI *HERE*.

If you have any questions/comments regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section.