gallet

I personally find the term 'muggles' to be slightly offensive as if anyone who isn't a part of the secret society is somehow of deficient character. You have to admit for a bunch of people who like to muck around in the bush with our toys, we do come across as a pompous lot sometimes. <insert smiley face here>

Funnily enough as soon as I read your post my first response was to quote the 'apart from murdering the bum' bit and say something like, 'seems reasonable under the circumstances'. However I curbed my natural mischievous instincts. However after reading the thread I will say that there is an objection to the use of the so called 'derogatory' word bum in describing the person, but it is not what has already been pointed out. The objection is that there was no need to make any observation at all about the person who saw you find the cache, *anyone* seeing you finding/hiding the cache should be cause for concern.

You're right, I was incorrect when I implied the Venture Cx didn't do auto routing, that only applies to the Venture HC, which actually makes the choice even more invidious than I thought it was, Garmin hold out the very desirable H chip but you can only get it in a crap unit unless you move up to the Legend or Vista where they don't bother with the silly choices. However I can't agree with you that Garmin cannot reduce the price of the yellow eTrex non H model. I mean you don't see Apple computer still selling an old model when it has been upgraded, even though the new models are the same price. I mean get serious, who in their right minds would knowingly buy a Yellow eTrex instead of the eTrex H. Certainly 5 extra hours of battery life for the old eTrex is not a serious trade off for the huge difference in sensitivity, I mean we are talking about a level of reception that up until a few months ago could only be had in the top of the range $350 60CSx.

email the takitwithme site with a bug report.

Note, it's "takit" not "takeit" with me. Just in case you try to type it in as a url and get nowhere. [/pedants corner] Yeah I'm on a Mac using FireFox and I use takitwithme.com all the time works great. I've sent the map data to my HCx and I've also exported the gpx file to my desktop and dragged it into Google Earth and it works well. However I will note that occasionally it won't load the gpx file. What I do now before loading it is click on "view gpx file" and check that the lat longs are there. Always seems to work then. So maybe takitwithme is a tiny bit buggy but most of the time it's spot on.

Not really, that's just your way of seeing it because you don't use auto routing, in fact if you look at the price of the Yellow eTrex and Yellow eTrex H you see they are the same, therefore there is no charge for the H chip. Whether you use it or not moving up to the Legend HCx you are paying for auto routing capabilities. But mostly what you are getting is the best of both worlds, removable memory and an H chip. Do not underestimate the advantage of the H chip it is monumental. Sitting on a train I could not get any reception with my old Vista but with the new HCx I get 6 metre accuracy. Same when in a car, I can sit in the backseat and receive a strong signal no problems. Once you've used the H chip you'll wonder how you ever did without it. Get the Legend HCx, but if you are going to do that in my opinion it's worth spending the extra $15 for the flux gate compass and go for the Vista HCx

I just bought city navigator Australia V7, (2008 is coming out in a few weeks as a free update) it's about 18 months old and I was really surprised to find that it had a new overpass correctly mapped that was only finished about 18 months ago. Although I noticed on the back of the CD cover it said 'Revision D'.

it bugs me that although I have my gps to read HDD.DDDDD, in the wide location field it reads HDDDºMM.MMM

But surely you would agree that it would be foolish to choose an unnecessarily bulky gps with worse battery life, and a lower quality screen purely on the basis of a minor odometer bug that will be fixed with a software update?

My understanding is that the Legend does auto routing and the Venture doesn't. The Venture is indeed available as an H model but not an HCx like the Legend and Vista. The point is to force you to choose between terrific battery life and removable memory of the Venture Cx or no added memory and very bad battery life but the H chip in the Venture HC. The purpose of this invidious choice is to try and force you to not make either choice and buy a Legend HCx instead and get the best of both worlds as the price difference is so small.

Vista HCx usually reports 3 metres but I've seen it down to 2.8. This is in Australia where we do not have WAAS.

bigskyguy, dogwalkers2 Well that confirms it. Dogwalker that's what I found, perfect side to side and a bit short top to bottom. Should have been a bit short side to side as well but at least it's not too big. Bigskyguy, tell them you must have one of the old ones because it too long and send it back.

look at the brown highlighted field. I think it's well worth paying the extra $15.

In real world prices the difference is only about $40 because the 60CSx is available on ebay for $300 with a $50 rebate and you can pick up the HCx for $210. But you can't go on prices because Garmin just do whatever they can get away with. You will see on their website that they sell the old non H models at the same price as the new ones. To understand the difference you need to realise that before the H chips came out in the eTrex range, the 60CSx was the top dog and Garmin could therefore charge a premium price for it because if you wanted the extra sensitivity you had no choice. The H chips in the eTrex range have only been out for a few months, (hence the rebate for the 60CSx proving they were overpriced. At the moment it all comes down to how you like the button placement because that is the major difference apart from the extra bulk. I'm going to order a 60CSx so I can do a side by side comparison with the HCx and put this whole issue to bed about whether the 10% bigger screen on the 60 makes any difference considering it is lower res and duller. I'll post my results here when they are available, probably in a few weeks. My money is on the Vista HCx though.

Wouldn't it be easier to lose a real compass?

Yeah I've noticed this too. I'm on a mac, so I have to go down to the local library to load maps and stuff like that. I'm going to keep a copy of the drivers on a memory stick. Why don't you just keep a copy of the driver file handy for easy reinstalling.

I just noticed this in their communicator info page. Somehow it makes me feel like they at least understand how frustrating it is.

I just calibrated and set to magnetic north and checked my HCx against a Silva compass and it was out by 5 degrees. The Siva is 20 years old so it may also be out. Even if it was perfectly accurate, it still would not be useful for plotting a back bearing on a map. I'd always take a compass with me. However for everyday use the fluxgate compass is accurate enough.

This might work, go to the satellite page and go to the menu and select "Use with GPS off" then go to the menu again and select "New Location" and leave the GPS switched on and in the open for a half an hour.

This path was drawn in google maps then the map was opened in takitwithme.com and sent to the gps I also sent the path to my desktop as a gpx file and dragged that into google earth. So yes, it works really well.

check out the video demo here

The only difference between different country versions is the basemap. Basemaps are pretty useless generally.

-The Vista HCx has a better battery life (25 hours vs. the 18 hours the 60CSx offers) Yep -The Vista HCx is smaller and sounds a little more portable. Yep. -Both seem to have pretty much the same exact features. Yep. -The 60CSx has the external antenna built on which I'm assuming get's better signal. Can't really see why you'd want to connect an external antenna seeing as the HCx will get reception indoors and the 60CSx is not far behind. -The 60CSx comes with a microSD card for maps (I already have a 2gb microsd I can put in) The card is a non issue because it's only 128Mb and a one gig card is only $10 anyway, so who cares if the 60CSx comes with a $3 card? One main point you seem to have missed in the other threads is that the Vista HCx screen is a higher quality than the 60CSx, higher resolution and a lot brighter as well. In fact even though the 60CSx screen is 10% wider, the HCx will show 10% more map due to the better resolution.

Wonderful news, this will surely increase Garmin's Mac development. </sarcasm>

@='zafwon Yeah, I was referring to the eTrex Vista (monochrome)