By default, when you search for a restaurant you have to specify a type(American, Barbecue, Chinese). These categories are held inside the sub-ground "Other/Restaurant Area".

By default, you are unable to search for all restaurant types unless you specify which style of food you are looking for. However, if you make a new group inside "Restaurant" alongside "Other/Restaurant Area" and name it something like "All Restaurants" and place all the POIs in that category, I believe that will allow you to search for any style of restaurant close by.

This may not be a big 'wow' to some, but I thought it might be helpful. I would find it convenient if I didn't know what I wanted to eat and I could just find out ANY restaurant close to me, regardless of the style of food.

In any case, to do this we'll have to get all the POI's out of the subcategories and add them again to the new group. What are the options to get these into that group? When I get in from work I'm going to look around in testmode for a POI folder-- is there such a thing? How are the POI's actually stored inside the flash memory?

If you save criteria under saved criteria, you will be able to search for nearest restaurants or gas stations etc. without having to specify type.

But can you do just a general search? Perhaps by leaving the criteria blank? Then you would pull it up?

Or you could check the FAQ thread... there's a "trick" to search for all items within a category...

But can you do just a general search? Perhaps by leaving the criteria blank? Then you would pull it up?

What do you mean by a general search?

Ah, I get what you guys mean. I am aware of that 'trick', but instead of going into search you could just select the category and they could all come up for you.

When you get to the "search" screen before you select resturant or anything else, down at the bottom of the screen the "Search" button is readily available.

Selecting search then will search all categories and find you hopefully what you need.

Though, you must spell in correctly, these units don't give you "best match"

Personally I'd like to select a category that will just list all restaurants without having to go into search or into search criteria.

In any case, how are the POI's stored on the unit? Will I be able to add my own to a group of my own easily?

This could be done, actually. Default iGO skin has 'All' button that returns all POIs in vicinity. I'll try adding it to my scriptset when I get around to it...

Oh really? So you're saying there would be an "all" button on the bottom that would return all based on the category you're in? That would be great, and save me from having to create a whole new group and duplicate all of the POI's.

Yes. It's just one of those things that whoever created the Pioneer skin for iGO did not think about.

It looks like most of the default code is still there (they left most of original skin untouched) so it should be only a matter of dropping a button on thу screen and connecting it to a correct state.

Awesome. I'll take a look when I get in, but if by chance you happen to work on any of it let me know how it goes! Appreciated.

Yup. Check the Proress Report thread.

The button will be on your POI screen, left of the Search button (I'll probably move Search to the right corner and keep All in the left).

Just saw it. Absolutely perfect. Thank you SO much!!

Well, not 100% perfect cosmetically... I think buttons would look better if placed in different corners rather than next to each other.

But just goes to show you that almost anything you can think of, you probably can do with iGO...