For Xmas I always buy myself something of a technical nature. This year I purchased a Uniden GNS 8350 GPS unit for myself. It sucks and needs serious work that Uniden don't look like they are prepared to do.

I must say that I am somewhat disappointed with this product. It sucks the fat one basically, the MP3 player is quite possibly the worst I have ever seen (I would compare its fucntionality to that of the very first version of WAV player in Windows 3.1) and the maps that they base the GPS system off are about 8 years out of date, as a result the voice prompting tries to lead you down one way systems the wrong way, into roads that no longer exist, or straight past roads that would get you there quicker but aren't on the map because they have been built after the map was made.

If you are thinking of buying this product, don't do it.

Anyway out of frustration with the shite state of the mp3 player me and my boss set about trying to gain access to the Windows shell. If you have made the same mistake as me in buying this product read on and hopefully the following will help you perhaps get the most out of this device.

The first problem when trying to get access encountered was the problem of installing / compiling programs to install onto the device. There is no way to connect it to your PC and so installing the programs became quite a problem.

The next thing you need to do is get yourself a copy of DTree from http://www.tucows.com/get/183459_63730 this is a file manager for Windows CE that does not require itself to be installed in the usual fashion. You want to use the "Arm" version of this program. Load this onto your SDCARD replacing (after renaming the original file as a backup) to \MobileNavigator\MobileNavigator.exe. This is replacing the Navigator program that is run off the card with DTree, don't worry you can change it back later, none of the other programs launched off the main menu are stored on the card so we have to replace this one to gain access to Windows.

Having done this repower your device and then select Navi on the main menu, your device may boot straight into DTree now (depending how you have it configured). From here you have access to the whole file system... yay time to start playing. (If it doesn't load automatically run "Navi").

From here you navigate your way to Flash Disc \ XOthello and copy the explorer.exe file from \WINDOWS\explorer.exe to XOth.exe (after backing up your original copy by renaming it to XOth.exe.old.

Now you can launch Explorer.exe from the main menu of the GPS unit by selecting "Game". I never liked Othello anyways, of course you can always launch it from the file manager by navigating to your backup copy.

Unfortunately I am yet to find a sufficient MP3 player for Windows CE that will run on the GNSs' ARM processor. XAudio (www.xaudio.com) looked good, but unfortunately for one reason or another it wont save playlist files... which is useless.

I have also tried Windows Media Player, which although would save playlists the screen is too small and you can't see most of the player.

I have basically abandoned this project (and the GPS unit) but thought I would post it up to help get others started that can actually be bothered doing it.

Please let me know if you do find a good MP3 player as I would still have a use for it.