Mio C220
The Mio C220 is one of the best gadgets I ever bought. Let’s just say I’m really bad with directions. Don’t know North from South and East from West. I read many reviews on this particular device and decided to pick one up because of it’s hackability. I can turn it into an MP3/video player and pretty much anything you want to put on it since it’s basically a WinCE 5.0 device.
My GF and I went to the US over the long weekend and decided we’d pick one up there. It was cheaper in US than Canada.
It was kinda ironic that we got lost trying to find a Best Buy that carried it. The first one we went to was sold out of them. And we missed the exit to the second BB. However, we lucked out and saw another BB further down on the highway. We took the exit and bought one. Good thing cause we didn’t know where we were.
Right out of the box it worked. Turned it on and had it guided us to our hotel in Washington. The C220 is very easy to use. It was intuitive. I didn’t read the manual and was able to figure out how to enter in our destination. We got to our hotel just fine without missing a street. Usually, we’d be deciphering the Google Map printouts and missing the exits. Most importanly, we’d argue a lot.
With the GPS, I no longer spend time thinking about directions ’cause it tells me when to turn well in advance. “Turn left in 400 meters.” It’s also a calmer drive without the fights with the GF about directions.
When I got home from the trip I started “hacking” it to do other things. First of all, I added more maps. And “freed”the Mio from just being a GPS device. By default, upon bootup, it goes directly into MioMap. But we can make it boot up a WinCE shell instead to launch other applications.
Here’s what my device can do so far:
GPS - I’m never lost again
Video - plays divx/xvid/mp4/flv/etc without conversion! Just drop it on there and it plays. Using TCPMP
Music - plays OGG/MP3/WAV/etc with TCPMP
Picture - view JPG/BMP/etc with GQ Viewer
Calculator - to calculates tips on the road
Still working on getting things like TTS (text to speech) working. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Mio said “Turn left onto Oak Drive in 100 meters” instead of “Turn left in 100meters”? I think so!
