savant9

The OS getamap appears to just output a route in gpx format, so that would be of use in basically any gps. Of your listed choices, you really cant go wrong with the Oregon 450.

I guess the obvious question is: Do you have lock on road turned off? Setup--->Routing--->Lock on Road

Yes, the new etrex line was my uncertainty. I wasn't sure whether it was 2000 or 5000, but 500 seems laughable. I don't personally own one to test( although I currently have had or do have all the others listed). I suspect all the etrex x0 line is the same as they all run the same firmware, do they not?

Here is my mental list... so it may have an error (highly unlikely ) Montana - 12000 Oregon x50, Gpsmap62/78, Etrex x0 - 5000 Oregon x00, Dakota x0, Colorado -2000

Sure did. Not one but two Montanas on the dash in plain sight! We do it all the time in Canada. Mine sits on my dash 24/7, I even leave my keys in the ignition while at work. O-Canada!

I beleive its userdata.gpx that has all the waypoints in it.

You will get an email notification of any log on your cache.

As mentioned by others, the only difference is the camera, all other features are the same (the whole x50 line uses the same firmware). The 550 also comes bundled with a couple batteries and a charger. Well worth the $30 difference.

Is there a reason that mapsource still doesn't do what you want it to?

Ahh, yeah they changed the icon just before garmin launched their own caching site.

Can you elaborate on this? There is no web browser so I don't really know what you mean.

So you have already logged your finds on GC.com but you just want to mark them as found on your Montana now that you are home? If I understand that correctly you want to go to geocaches---> then select the cache you want-----> then select go. Now you should be on the map screen, so hit the X in the bottom corner and select geocaches again (or if you are using the geocaching dashboard just tap anywhere by the displayed compass to pull up the details) and you can select Log attempt from there, and mark as found. In short, you must be navigating to the cache in order to mark it as found. Of course you can just wait till you run your next PQ and it will be gone(if you exclude finds) or shown as found automatically after loading a fresh PQ(if you include finds in your PQ) It is definitely easier if you mark them as found when you actually find them, then you can use your field notes later for logging as mentioned by Cacheoholic

It seems there is also an update to the Time Zone Map from v7.0 - v9.0, unless of course I have missed that in the past.

Interesting. Are you sure its the vibration or could it be "electrical noise" messing with the compass? Have you tried holding the unit in the same position with the engine running to see if it still behaves that way?

I dont know exactly what kind of conclusions can be drawn from this but I will throw some stats at you to explain my reason for calling the forum users exceptions. The front page of geocaching.com states that there are over 5 million geocachers (exact number unknown) At the bottom of the forums it states the number of registered forum users as 759743 So taking those numbers we see that only 15% of all cachers have even registered in the forums. Of course I have no way of knowing how many of those are abandoned or inactive accounts, but for this discussion I will just leave it at 15% To me it would seem that being in the 15 percentile already puts us as exceptions to the geocacher norm. How many of the forum users enjoy/seek EC's? I dont know the answer. How many EC loggers are forum users? I don't know this either, but just to give myself an Idea I looked a random EC of your as a sample. I chose your "Devil"s Elbow" EC for no reason other than it had a larger number of favourites. I looked at the 10 most recent visitors, clicked through to their profiles and clicked the "see the forum posts for this user" links. Of those 10, 9 are premium members and 0 have made forum posts. While this is not a huge sample size, I find those stats interesting. I wouldn't enable PMO on any of my EC's because I don't see the need to do so. Some others may see the need, and I appreciate the fact that they are free to make that decision on their own. While I dont anticipate ever changing my desire to enable PMO status, if I did, i wouldn't be happy about someone telling me I am not permitted to do so.

WOW, what screen was left on or was it in battery save mode? Yes it was in battery save mode, with the screen blanked until I touched it at which point I saw that it was just on the geocaching main menu.

I have an even better one than that. The other day when you were talking about the barometer issues, i was going to do the same test as you. I turned on my fully charged montana and was about to make some setting changes when I had to rush out, forgetting all about it. It wasnt till the next evening, (24 hrs later) when i sat down at my desk, that I touched the screen and realized it was left on and still showed 11%.

I am not specifically disagreeing with you, more so just curious. How do you know that a vast majority of ECers would like to see PMO made off limits for EC's? Is this based on the vocal few in this and the previous threads or is this based on some other way of determining? I think the dynamic of these forums is skewed in that if something appears to be a majority in the forums it doesn't necessarily represent the community as a whole. I would even dare say that the forum posters typically are exceptions to the general community. For the record, I am not against PMO EC's. I would not make any EC of mine PMO but if others want to for w/e reason, it wont bother me.

There are more differences than that. The OR 300 is discontinued (all the OR x00 line is) The OR 300 only has a 2 axis compass vs the 3 axis in the 450 (think you need it or not, it is a much better compass and really is useful) The OR 300 only supports 2000 geocaches vs the 5000 of the 450 The OR 450 has a better visibility screen than the 300 The OR 300 only supports slow USB 1.1 transfer speeds vs the USB 2.0 of the 450 (this makes a difference when transferring large map files, birdseye images) The OR 450 gets firmware updates and enhancements that are not being added to the x00 line any more (Such as this and this )

In the past I have tried GSAK but didn't really have a need for it. I have retried it now @ V8 and love the API access features. It was an instant purchase for me. I don't have any tips for you so far as I am still weeding through all the features myself, but it definitely seems like a worthwhile purchase.

Waypoint averaging was added in April 2009 with firmware 2.96beta, then with the official firmware release of 3.10 in June of 2009. If you are running a firmware older than 3.10 you are missing out on a lot of enhancements and features. You can check your version in settings--->about. If you are not up to date, which i suspect you are not, you can connect your gps to your computer and run webupdater

Is it possible your ISP caches some images?

The plugin can act up for some people. A work around is just to manually drag and drop the gpx files into the "geocaches" folder on the gps in mass storage mode.

My power socket (cigarette lighter isn't PC anymore) is also constantly powered. I hit the problem sometimes if I put the Montana in the cradle while the gps is powered off. I usually just leave mine in the cradle and leave it powered up all the time. On the rare occasion that I shut it down with the power button, while still in the powered cradle it is reluctant to start back up with the power button, sometimes requiring pulling the socket out and waiting a few seconds then plugging it back in, at which point it may boot up normally or gray screen.

I have mine set to auto switch to automotive profile when in the cradle, and switch to geocaching when removed. Pressure trending set to save while on, in both profiles. I am referring to the white(gray) screen on power up, however i do not require a battery pull when it does this, just remove from cradle and hold power button for 5 seconds and it turns off for me. Reinserting into the cradle boots normal the next time.