BelchFire

Remember that the H models aren't advertising higher accuracy. They're superiority is in the reception of the signal and is best seen in heavy tree cover or with an obstructed view of the horizon.

It all depends on which eTrex unit you get. I have a camo eTrex, and it is indeed, serial, but I also have a Vista HCx, and it connects through USB.

you won't be sorry; gratfulHIKE gives good advice.

Garmin's Legend HCx is $215.37 on Amazon.com and City Navigator NT is $115.12. Both are available for free shipping. For $330.49 you can have (almost) top of the line. The only thing better would be a Vista with a fluxgate compass, but that would cost you an extra $23.15. For your budget, I'd "splurge" the extra $30; you won't be sorry.

I thought I stumbled into a neat discovery today, but I'm reserving judgment until someone else tells me something about it. I was hiking today and turned off City Navigator (in my Vista HCx). Later, when I was driving again, I told it to route me to a destination and it did. Only later did it occur to me that CN was still turned off -- BUT auto-route was STILL WORKING. Hey! I might just be onto something! Basically, I was looking at TOPO 2008 (land contours and roads), but routing with City Navigator. Neat-o! However, I noticed some strange turns (in familiar territory) that might be the only caveat to doing this. Anyone else tried that yet?

bigskyguy, IIRC, you and I received the same size screen for the HCx. I sent a snail mail with a typewritten letter today; maybe that'll get their attention. If that doesn't work, the next one is going out registered mail to Mr. President and CEO. For the record, all communications I have had with them have been pleasant and their action is good (send a new unit). What torques me is that they sent the SAME wrong one to replace the original wrong one.

If it went off by itself, any button will turn it back to the level it was on last. If you pre-set it to 25% and it goes out, the click-stick will even bring it back to 25%. The power button will bring it back as well as UP to 100%, and then off, then back to 25%.

After a week or so, I got a follow-up e-mail that said "we're sorry and we'll send you the correct unit with a SASE to return the wrong one." OK, that's fair enough so I wait. The replacement unit came in yesterday, HURRAY, but I open the package and NO JOY. It's EXACTLY like the first one. Too tall by 0.236" at the center and too narrow by 0.211" at the "shoulder" area (where the upper portion of the screen is wider than the bottom). *sigh* And they DIDN'T include a SASE for return of the wrong one (which wrong one would that be?) What's a man to do? Let's try e-mail again..........

I have a Vista HCx that I use regularly with a 12V adapter, but it's an aftermarket that I bought on E-Bay. It has a coiled cable and I liked that better than Garmin's straight cable. I'm not sure how much I've used it (certainly more than 20 hours), but I haven't had any problems and it's been through several vehicle stop/start sequences.

My bad; I was quoting word of mouth and I shouldn't have. As for my expectations of service; imajeep, I would expect a company to honor their warranty and to repair/replace a defective laptop that is within warranty. I don't see that as unrealistic. When I pay 100% of what they are asking, I expect to receive 100% of what they are offering. But I'm off topic with the wrong company. My apologies.

But it does work. Press the power button twice and you get your preset level. Press it a third time and you get 100%. It's a battery saving feature to turn it off when you're not looking at it. And since it can't tell when you're looking or not, you can tell it how long to hold the backlight on. That's right above the backlight setting on the display setup page; you can even tell it to stay on. Trust me, you don't want the backlight on all the time.

Tiger GPS is a sister company to Tiger Direct.com. I have bought many computer components from them in the past. I will not be doing any more business with them at any price. The warranty for their name brand stuff is non-existent and their products are garbage. They essentially have NO customer service even though you can call them and wait (and wait, and wait) so when you have a problem, you're on your own. No more of my coin for these crooks.

I've got a 4 year old Camo etrex that's still tight and it stays in the truck 1/2 the time in So. GA. I've also got a Vista HCx that's about 2 months old that's still tight too. I hope I'm not speaking too soon.

Cool idea! But I've gotta admit, I would have opened the fuel filler door first. I take it you don't have a neighborhood watch in effect. Seems like a good way to get shot if the neighbors don't know about it. If I tried that, some yahoo would come a long and sign the log, then lock it out of habit.

I don't know -- but I did find a place that sells City Nav NA NT 2008, luckily: ehqonline. It was only $111.29, free same-day shipping. I checked the forums for others' experiences with ehqonline and they seemed quite positive, so I went ahead and ordered it. Me too. For the cost difference, I'd rather have 2008 up front.

Or how about logging a "half find" if you've only solved the puzzle but not visited the site and logged the find? Of course this would require verification from the log owner by e-mail or PM. Those who solve the puzzle and sign the log get "two half logs" thus totaling a whole. Past finders wouldn't suffer and those from New Jersey who solve a puzzle in Guam get a half log for their efforts. Would that work?

Never heard of the Atlantic and Pacific models. I have a standard issue Vista HCx, and I see no reason it wouldn't work for you in the UK, with proper maps, of course. edit: A quick google search for "vista hcx atlantic" is giving me some references to "Atlantic Basemaps". Sounds like the base map may be different than the one that came on mine (makes sense), but I couldn't tell exactly what the map does or does not show. Common sense tells me that if you're in the UK, you'd need the Atlantic version before you need the Pacific version. But this is all predicated on the basemaps being different. If you're going to load your own maps, I don't see how it would matter either way.

I downloaded both updates and my HCx is working fine. Go for it.

That's what I do. I'm running Firmware 2.40. I clear the track log and reset the trip computer. I start walking to a fork and randomly pick a road and walk it to the end. At this point, I turn off tracks and go back to the fork. I turn tracks back on and start up the other fork and suddenly I have a long straight line from the end of the first road back to the fork. Really kind of stupid looking. As I said earlier, saving the first track by a road name and clearing the track log gets around it but it's really annoying to have to do that.

leog, it even does it if you turn tracking off and on. That's the whole issue in my post. I tried to follow all the roads at my hunting club and have them display on MapSource. When I came to a fork, I would take one fork to its end, turn off track log, go back to the fork, turn it back on and there would be a line from the fork back to the last point on the end of the first leg. Very unsightly on MapSource. So what I had to do was very cumbersome. I named all the roads and saved each track individually. Very cumbersome.

Prime, he's right. When you power up (on a 12V cord), and turn on the light, it will go off when the sat page comes up. Annoying, but not hard to get around; just don't turn on the light until the sat page come sup first; easy to see from the dash lights alone. The straight lines in the tracks are VERY annoying. I agree with dstedman. My Camo eTrex even got that one right. You'd think they'd stay with the stuff that works rather than regress.

MapSource. Comes with newer Garmin units.

LIB! That's it! I thought that was telling me when the sat photos were made. I learned something else quite by accident. If you swapt o Sky view, and then swap back to earth view, most of them show up that way. Weird........

Sorry, this is in MapSource: >View >View in in Google Earth...

I've enjoyed using View in Google Earth for a while now, but all of a sudden the newer waypoints I'm adding (manually) don't show up in Google Earth. Is there a limit to the number of waypoints that will transfer to Google Earth? Is there a check mark I'm missing? Whazzzup with that?