NightPilot

On a serial connection, you won't see the GPS listed as a drive. It's just a device on a COM port, and the port is all you will see. Software will find the GPS, though. You can use GSAK, GPSBabel, EasyGPS, or lots of other programs to send waypoints. For these, or for the web updater, you have to tell them which COM port the GPS is on. Even though you may only have one physical serial port, you can have many virtual ports. Out of the box, Windows assigns the first physical port to both Com1 and Com3. Open Device Manager and see what ports it thinks exist, and try all of them in the web updater. It's trial and error, standard MS stuff.

The 496 and 396 are very nice units, and have marine and road modes in addition to aviation. If you have the cash, they can do a lot. They currently sell for ~$2800 and $2200 respectively, database and maps included, XM subscription not included.

It said it received data, so the connection is good. The Legend may be set to NMEA interface instead of Garmin. For transferring waypoints, it has to be set to Garmin. For interfacing with other programs, it usually needs to be set to NMEA in/out. Make sure it is set to Garmin, and see if that works.

Open Windows Explorer (My Computer) and go to the CD drive. Look for a file with a .msi or .inf extension. Right-click on it, and select Install. That should install the driver. Do not connect the adapter until after you do this. Then open Device Manager and see which COM port was created for the adapter. It's not a USB connection, it's serial - you're using a USB connection to make a virtual serial port, not the other way around.

I thought it did, or at least used to. I vaguely seem to remember trying it on an old Palm Z71 long ago, but perhaps that was a false memory.

Garmin units with XM capability.. No handhelds, but many products.

The adapter will come with drivers. If not, you can download them from the mfr's website. I'm a little leery of using stuff downloaded from .ch domains, or .ru for that matter. Many are perfectly legitimate, but lots of worms live over there.

I think lots of people over there are using Memory Map, so you might give them a look also.

Sorry, no. Most modern PDAs sync via USB, but they don't work well with Vista. Vista simply isn't ready for prime time. Palm's Quick Install tool doesn't work with Vista, or didn't until very recently. The sync works, more or less, most of the time, but Micro$oft broke lots of things with Vista, and almost every third-party vendor is struggling to catch up and make things compatible. Again, most modern PDAs will sync, but full compatibility is still not there, for Palm or Windows Mobile devices. The Vx is many generations old, and there is a good reason people sell them for almost nothing. My only advice is to get a real serial port (USB is a MS abortion, that really isn't universal) and sync through that.

Open My Computer, select the drive, (you'll need a drive connected to do this) select Properties, and then the Autoplay tab. Select Do Nothing, Apply, OK, and you're done.

The easiest way to do this is to buy a PCMCIA serial port card. This gives you a serial port on your laptop, and you don't have to do any conversions. If you don't have a PCMCIA slot, well, you're SOL. People need to give some thought to the peripherals they might want to use before buying the computer. There is a reason those Palm IIIxe and similar models are so friggin' cheap. They work, but you have to know just a little about computers to get them to do it.

Any bluetooth receiver should work. Bluetooth is not device-specific, so most should work together fine.

You have the process backward. The adapter turns a USB port into a serial port. It's serial all the way, NOT USB. You have to load the drivers into the PC, and then use Device Manager to see which COM port is being created. COM5 is common. You then have to tell the Palm Hotsync Manager which COM port to use. IT IS NOT, AND NEVER WILL BE, USB.

You need a USB-serial adapter. Most should work. It converts a USB port to an RS232 serial port. For Vista, I have no idea whether anything at all will work. There have been reports of all sorts of problems with Vista, and I don't plan to start using it until at least service pack 2, if then. Palm's Quick Install tool doesn't work with Vista, so you can't use that. Good luck.

Usual suspects: Wrong serial port selected. Check Device Manager and select the right one. Local Serial not selected in Hotsync Manager. Right-click on the icon in the system tray, and select it. Bad cable/cradle. Only real fix is to get a new one, they're not worth futzing with. Dirty contacts on Palm and/or cradle. This can be fixed with a pencil eraser. An old typewriter eraser, with some grit in the rubber, works best, but they are very hard to find. Corrupt Hotsync Manager. Reinstall.

Most, if not all, manufacturers recommend NOT fully discharging NiMH batteries. Run them down, but don't fully discharge them. They're not like NiCd, which do require occasional full discharging to prevent memory setting. I charge mine to a full charge, then put them in a Pelican case for storage. They do discharge over time, but it's not worth the effort to freeze them, at least for me. I'm not often near my freezer when I need batteries. I am often relatively near my truck, though, and that's where I keep most of my batteries. Convenience trumps keeping a full charge. The newer hybrid batteries, which will soon be all you can buy, I predict, mostly eliminate the problem of discharging over time anyway.

Or just have a card reader and an SD adapter, and use it just like any other USB memory stick. My laptop has an SD slot, so no reader is necessary, but I do have a Lexar Jumpdrive for use with computers without a slot. Most printers now have SD slots, and these also work as card readers, albeit slow ones.

First, it is not live radar. It's 5 minutes or more old, but probably good enough. Garmin does offer this, at least in aviation units, and maybe in others, probably car units. I have a Garmin 396 in the helicopter I fly, and it's very nice. It will also show weather observations at the nearest airports, and satellite pictures for cloud cover. The satellite overlay isn't worth that much, but having recent radar pictures takes some of the anxiety out of tooling around at 2AM with thunderstorms in the area. 10 miles can be very close if there is extensive lightning. It's worth it to me, especially since the company is paying. For a handheld, for caching, it's a different story, and I don't think the service is being tailored to that market. For flying, it's not as good as having a real weather radar, but it's a lot better than nothing, and the cost and weight are far, far lower.

Both are reputable manufacturers, and both should work. Bluetooth is device-independent, so there should be no compatibility problems. I haven't actually used either GPS, but I would buy on price, since they should both work fine.

Bluetooth is device independent, so any GPS that sends NMEA sentences should work. I like this one. The solar panel is an advantage.

Make your own. Or you can put "USB car charger" into Google and find a few hundred retailers who sell them. They generally go for ~$5. You just use your standard USB cable to the Palm for the charging.

Are you positive? Are you moving? If you're not moving, the GPS has no way of knowing which way you're facing, and can only determine that from the changes in position caused mostly by atmospheric changes. The bearing pointer only works when you're moving at a decent speed. I don't even use it, preferring by far the Trip Computer page, which you can set to show whatever data you like. I prefer bearing, heading, distance, and speed, but YMMV. The bearing is always the correct direction to the waypoint, no matter which way you're facing or moving. The heading shows which direction you're moving. Match the two, and you're moving directly to the cache. The distance shows how far you are from the waypoint, and the closer you get, the more variation you'll see on the bearing, as your computed position changes. The speed is really only a sanity check - if your walking speed is 100mph, you know the signal has gone south, or something else is way out of whack. You can put a bearing pointer in place of speed or anything else if you prefer. As I said, I don't use the navigation page for much of anything, because it's not reliable much of the time.

All that may be of some academic interest to some, but the practical answer for geocachers is that NAD83 and WGS84 are identical. Any differences are much smaller than the accuracy of the GPS, so they can be, for all practical purposes, considered to be the same.

You also have to make sure the Legend is set to Garmin interface, not NMEA or anything else. It will only work for this in Garmin. NMEA is for communicating with other programs while providing position data.

Is it displaying the bearing pointer or the course pointer? Makes a difference.