Crid

I'm not sure if you mean the back or the front. My old one had a fairly large gap on the front where the battery compartment cover went along the bottom under the screen - even if I pushed it up as far as it would go. It was almost as if the cover was incorrectly shaped. The new one is a much more snug fit. There is a slight gap all the way round (not much more that the thickness of a fingernail) and it's pretty uniform. Much more satisfactory. My only complaint is that it's really tough to get it off when I want to get at the batteries. I think it's the gasket around the battery compartment itself causing the difficulty because it's only the first 1/2 inch when getting it off (or last 1/2 inch when putting it on). Maybe it will loosen up a bit after a few battery changes. I literally received this unit from Garmin today, but I'm not sure if it's a refurb or a brand new unit. It was a complete boxed unit with carabina, cable, CD, the works. I only sent my damaged unit (minus carabina), which is what they told me to do. The number is in the range 16911????, if that gives any clues about the age.

I'm in the UK and have had my Colorado replaced by Garmin this week (I managed to damage it, so it wasn't a warantee replacement). The back cover fits a lot better than the old one (in fact it's quite difficult to get off when I want to change the batteries). I've just looked and I have the "July 2009" SD card seal at the bottom.

Well you can add me to the list of people impressed by Garmin's customer service (although not their ability to answer emails). I was told to send in just the GPS (not even the carabina clip), which I did on Saturday. It was delivered to them on Monday morning. This morning (Friday) I received the replacement Colorado. It looks like it's probably a brand new one. Not just the GPS, but an entire boxed one along with cables, carabina clip, CD, the full works. The back fits properly (unlike my last one, where there was always a gap along the bottom), which makes me think that at the very least it is newer than my old one. I'm a happy bunny. Now I've just got to get it all set up how I like...

I own a 76CSx (basically a 60CSx in a different form factor) and a Colorado. They're both good units and the "drift" issues of the Colorado do seem to have been sorted out with firmware updates. I find the accuracy of both units are pretty similar - sometimes one of them may drift off while the other one stays on course, but it's not always the same one that drifts off. Just the nature of GPS I guess. I love the paperless caching aspect of the Colorado, but the interface on the unit is pretty clunky compared to the 76CSx - especially when entering information using the wheel. I imagine the Oregon's touch screen has made things a bit easier on that front. Then again, my opinion may be a bit biased because I had the 76CSx for a year before I bought the Colorado. The Colorado's interface isn't BAD - just clunky and sometimes longwinded with the occasional odd omission (you can't see how much tracklog is currently stored, up until a recent firmware update you couldn't do averaging on a waypoint, etc). As well as geocaching I also do OSM mapping. I tend to use both units for that, but I normally only record names of things on the 76CSx because navigating around the letters is a lot faster. The Colorado has internal memory as well as an SD slot, so I can have OSM maps *and* City Navigator maps and swap between them on the options menu. And the paperless caching is a lot more convenient than the method I previously used which involved loading the cache information onto my iPod.

When viewing my finds, the sort order seems to be broken again. Did the latest update somehow revert to an earlier version of this page? Edit: I've just checked the listing of caches from my location, and the order seems to be broken for that too.

I think that's part of the addiction of it. I also sometimes use the OSM Mapper tool at ITO World. Another local cacher contributes to OSM. I have encountered a few times where a footpath is only mapped as far as the cache (although he does tend to map a bit past the cache, so as to not completely give the game away).

I've been contributing to openstreetmap for about 2 years now. I started doing that around the same time that I started geocaching. I've found both activities to be remarkably addictive and they both encourage me to visit new places rather than sticking to a handful of "regular" walks.

Well no reply to my email, so I've just rung them. I must say I'm actually quite impressed by their customer service on the phone. I have to send my broken unit in and they will send me an as-new refurbished unit with a year's warantee on it. I was expecting it to cost about £100 (because the screen is broken). It's going to cost me £85.64, plus what it costs for me to post it to them (special delivery with insurance, obviously). The official turnaround is apparently 10 working days from when they receive it. We'll see how that goes, but I suspect it will probably be quicker than that.

Nope. I emailed them on Sunday about my Colorado. No reply yet. I think if I haven't heard from them by Friday I will try telephoning them.

Does anybody have any information about this? I don't live particularly close to London, but a trip there wouldn't be a massive headache for me. Obviously the price and the quality of the service are pretty important to me.

Puzzle caches are, by nature, visited less often than regular caches. But you never know how many people are pondering the puzzle, or have cracked the puzzle but haven't visited the cache yet. I have a puzzle cache that is about a year old. A couple of months ago somebody from Germany logged a find during a visit to the area. I myself got interested in puzzle caches after tackling one during a visit to Woking, which is well out of my usual geocaching "patch". Finds never come at regular intervals. Roughly a year ago I did a (not terribly difficult) puzzle cache that hadn't been found in well over a year. Since then there have been seven finds logged for it.

If you're in a location where there is no cell phone signal, presumably you wouldn't be able to send a text message anyway. I imagine pretty much any radio transmission that relies on line-of-sight would have the same restrictions. So unless you're planning to bounce your location data off a satellite, I imagine your options would be pretty limited.

Well I've sent an email to techsupp.europe@garmin.com, so I'll see how long it takes them to reply. It was my own carelessness, so I probably won't bother trying to do it on the insurance. I should learn not to be so dumb. (The carelessness was me not paying attention, rather than actually doing something dumb to start with).

It was my own stupid fault, but this afternoon I've managed to bust the LCD display on my Garmin Colorado (but strangely, not the glass). The unit itself still appears to be working OK, but the top half of the screen is pretty much useless. Do Garmin (or anybody else) in the UK do repairs for this sort of thing? I don't want to throw the unit away, since the rest of it seems to be OK. Since it was my own fault, I'm not expecting Garmin to repair it for free.

You don't need a Twitter account in order to read the updates. I just did a Google search for Twitter Jeremy Irish and found what I was looking for.

I came here to say the same thing. I've not noticed it before today.

Thanks from me too. I'd never seen the point of Twitter before last night, but Jeremy's onsite updates gave just the right level of detail of what was going on. I'm still not signing up for a Twitter account though.

How to beat your children at videogames

I have a Colorado 300 and I haven't noticed any difference. The profiles are simply custom setups and you can create your own or delete the presets. I've got a profile set up with tracking switched on because the menu item to toggle tracking is a couple of levels down in the menus. This was I can toggle tracking simply by changing profiles.

Fresh batteries.

Same problem here. Incredibly slow at the moment.

You geocache using a sextant and a chronometer? Wow, that's hardcore!

Along similar lines, what about people (like me) who have more than one GPS? Having selected one I now can't add a second one or remove the first one.

Along with the Mac-specific advice (clear the trash while the device is attached), I'd also point out that child waypoints get loaded as regular waypoints. So even after deleting the GPX file, the child waypoints are still there (unlike the caches, which should disappear). You end up having to delete those manually. That's a bit annoying.

I used to use my iPod, with cache details stored in the contact list. It was OK, but had problems with long cache descriptions (due to a limit on the page size in the iPod). Now I use a Colorado 300, which does the paperless stuff very nicely.