NightPilot

The CD should handle the installation, but if it doesn't, or you don't have one, just unzip the drivers to a folder, find the .inf file, right-click on it, and select install. That should do it.

My Palm, and now my N800, can carry every cache in existence if I want it to. 1000 waypoints is only a very minor fraction of what I carry on these, and they also show the cache pages completely, no 800 or 800,000 character limit. A GPS simply cannot do the job of a PDA or a computer unless it has a complete OS. I prefer to use my N800 and a cheap bluetooth GPS. With the N800 or a Palm, I have a complete OS, can download all the maps I want for free, and display my GPS position on them. For caching satellite (or aerial photo) images are very nice. I can use Maemo Mapper on the N800 to download the images and use the bluetooth GPS to display my position, the cache position, and if I want get driving directions to the cache. The DeLorme GPS is nice, but it's not in the same league. The N800 only cost $200, the software is free, and the bluetooth GPS was another ~$35. This gives far more functionality and capability than any standalone GPS ever will, for far less money. The N800 is a complete computer by itself, giving me email, Skype, contacts, calendar, and anything else a computer can do, and the geocaching is just another small application. Buying a geocaching GPS makes absolutely no sense to me.

You can get an eTrex cable from Pfranc. It uses serial, not USB, and if your computer has no serial port you'll have to buy an adapter. The adapter converts a USB port to a serial port, and you'll have to tell the software you're using to transfer the waypoints which serial port is being used.

You can use the M500 with any GPS which uses serial communications, and for which you can find a cable. Cables are available from PC-Mobile and Pfranc. The M500 has the 'universal connector', the middle generation of Palm connectors. You'll need software, of course. For caching, you can use Cetus or CacheNav, which comes as a plugin to Cachemate. Cetus has more features, but doesn't completely integrate into Cachemate.

Walgreens, and other places as well, still sell cheap batteries that aren't alkaline, just the old carbon/zinc kind. Those don't last long at all. Make sure you're getting alkaline batteries - they should actually say alkaline, not 'super-power' or whatever.

Apple's original decision to keep the Apple -> Mac empire a closed system insured that the Mac will always be a niche market. Developers just don't want to deal with the problems of writing for it because of the small market. There is (barely) a large enough market to make it worthwhile for a very few companies to write word processing and browsing software, but beyond that it's always going to be rather sparse.

No, no mini-keyboards, thank god. IME those are just about worthless. I can enter text or other data via Grafitti much faster than I can push itty-bitty buttons. YMMV.

Sunrise or Plucker will choke on some sites if the depth and domain aren't restricted. I've seen Sunrise choke and give up on some sites - I let it run for 2 days once on a site, and it never finished. You have to be careful with the settings, especially on sites with more links to other sites than to their own pages.

Another thing that I forgot to mention is restricting the pluck to the host. If you don't, you'll be plucking pages from all over the web, which are mostly extraneous. Restrict it to the domain, at a minimum, or preferably the host. That should make your files much smaller and several times quicker to run.

The maps should work on a DeLorme GPS. Nothing else, though.

The problem is only with the Quick Install tool. Use the standard install, use PInstall, or simply put the data on an SD card and put that into your Palm. Hotsyncing large files to a Palm is an exercise in futility, and was never intended to be done by Palm. Hotsyncing is to get your PIM data synced between the handheld and the desktop, nothing more. I never install anything through hotsyncing, because it takes too long and is too unreliable. I either use PInstall, or most of the time, just use the SD card. My laptop has an SD slot, and it's quick and painless. If you don't have a slot, or no card slot on your printer (which also functions as a card reader) you can get a card reader for ~$10, and transfer anything much, much faster, at true USB 2.0 speeds. You need to put the files in the proper folder on the card, of course. For Cachemate, they go in \Cachemate. For programs, they go into \Palm\Launcher so they can be seen in the default Palm launcher. Some programs want their data files in \Palm\Programs\Appname, where Appname is the name of the app, or some abbreviation of it. The fine manual, which you should read, will tell you the details. Every app comes with a manual, and we all read them thoroughly, no? Hackers get to be hackers by reading the manual.

You have a couple of choices. Split the conversion into separate files, or limit the depth. If you have the depth set to more than 2, you're going to run into problems.

There are 3 SD card manufacturers - SanDisk, Toshiba, and Panasonic. Other brands buy in bulk from one of these and put their own labels on them. The problem with the adapters is probably Vista, not the adapters. Vista wasn't ready for prime time, and still isn't. Lots of things don't work under it.

Few software developers offer much Mac support. It's a niche market, too small to be worth the effort for most of them.

The quickest and easiest way to speed up a Lifedrive is to replace the hard drive with a CF card. Used PDA Parts sells the cards, preformatted, ready to go. You just open up the case, unplug the HD, and plug in the CF. Of course, you'll want a backup of any files you have stored on the HD. The Lifedrive Manager makes this fairly easy, or you can just use drive mode and copy everything to your PC. IMO that's the best way. The CF card is far faster, and uses far less battery power, than the hard drive. UsedPDAParts is very good to deal with. For caching software, CacheNav, which is integrated into Cachemate, works well. If you don't want to buy Cachemate, then CetusGPS is a good choice. It's freeware, and you can export the caches from GSAK, or use GPSBabel to convert them to Cetus waypoints. It doesn't do street mapping, just a distance and direction, basically the same display you would get on any non-mapping GPS. It's small and IME trouble-free. It will accept almost any GPS, and works well with a bluetooth receiver. The position you get from the GPS should be accurate. If it seems different from another GPS, make sure you're using the same coordinate system. Using degrees, minutes, and seconds isn't the same as degrees and decimal minutes. Usually with these problems the position is accurate, it's just the display that's incorrect.

Micro$oft broke lots of things with Vista. I ain't buying anything with Vista for at least a couple of years, if then.

Cachemate, and everything else, can be installed other ways. PInstall will do it, or you can get a cheap card reader (~$10) and transfer everything directly to an SD card, put it in your Palm, and you're ready. Either put it in the \Palm\Launcher folder on the card, or put it anywhere and use either FileProg, Filez, or UniCMD to copy from the card to the handheld. All are freeware file managers, and available on Palmgear or most other Palm software sites. There are literally thosands of Palm programs available that will do almost anything you can imagine, many of them free, or if shareware, pretty cheap.

There are several mapping programs around, for various prices. AFAIK they all work, more or less.

I use a Palm T3 and a dumb bluetooth GPS. The GPS just gets the location, sends it to the Palm via bluetooth, and everything else is on the Palm. I have all the maps and routing information the Nuvi and the rest have, Cachemate, CacheNav, Plucker, and everything else at the touch of a stylus. GSAK sends all the cache info directly to my SD card, I pop it in, and I'm ready to go. My Garmin handheld hasn't been turned on in many months.

The receiving unit will acquire the signal from the transmitting unit automatically, and ask if you want to accept the file. Tap 'Yes' and it will be accepted on the unit. IR beaming is pretty simple. As for beaming a category in Cachemate, just open the menu, select Record, and Beam Category. You will beam whatever category is currently in use.

Make sure the correct COM port is selected. You can see which is being used through Device Manager, and you have to select that one in the Hotsync Manager.

The differences are minor. MMC cards are practically obsolete, and it's difficult to find one. Any SD card should work fine. Get whatever is cheap. There are 3 SD card manufacturers - SanDisk, Panasonic, and Toshiba. All the other brands you see are one of these with a different label stuck on it, so don't worry about the brand too much. IME Panasonic makes the fastest and most reliable cards, but you can't tell the manufacturer by looking. Most of the Lexar cards I've seen have been Panasonic, but not all.

Not that I'm aware of. You might try your county government site, if there is one. Property ownership records are usually maintained at the county level, not above that, and it would be very labor intensive to get the data for every county in the US, or even in one state.

It's not plug and play. You're changing, via software and hardware, a USB port into a serial port. Drivers are always required, and are almost always available on the manufacturer's website.

There is no version of Cachemate for PC because there is no demand for it, there are already many apps available. My choice would be GSAK. It does everything you need, including exporting to Cachemate.