phern47

I don't know why you would want the 60CSX if you are on a budget. Unless you really want the buttons to be on the front of the GPS instead of on the side of the GPS. Yes the screen is large on the 60CSX but the Vista has a better screen with I think even more pixels. Otherwise, from what I can see, the Vista HCX and the 60CSX are the same.

You should do a research right here in this forum for your answer. Your question has been answered many, many times with great answers.

If the GPS is just for geocaching, maps are really not necessary. All you really need is a unit that can point you to the cache and get you within 50 so that from there, you can figure out where the cache is hidden. Any GPS unit, no matter how old or cheap can do that. The newer GPS models without mapping are a bit faster and a bit more accurate. The most recent models are even a bit faster and are much more sensitive to the signals coming from the satellites. If you live in an area where there are mountains, gullies, ravines, lots of heavy tree cover or in a large city, the more sensitive GPS units really help. GPS units with mapping (plus the detailed topographic software that you must buy) are really great for someone who wants to go exploring. Where I live, there are thousands of small lakes and ponds full of brook trout. I also do a lot of hunting. When I drive 20 miles north of where I live, there are no more cities, villages, no marked roads....all the way to the Hudson's Bay. When I travel along the logging roads, my GPS shows me small nearby lakes that I did not even know existed. Yes, I can see these small lakes on a detailed paper map but since the road is not on the maps, it's really hard to determine exactly where I am on the map. There are also remote large bodies of water where a person can get lost amongst the islands and bays. Yes, my old GPS units were great for these large bodies of water because I could back track the trails I had made on my blank screen but now, I can see ahead of where I am going and look for those places where streams or small rivers dump into the large body of water. These places usually offer better fishing. I can also see the shortcuts back to my starting point. However, GPS units with mapping cost more and you have to add the cost of the software. BTW, if you look at my profile, I haven't done any geocaching yet....lol. However, I really hope to change that soon. There were very few caches in my area but now, this activity is becoming quite popular where I live.

There are lots of older model usedGPS units to be had for about 50 dollars. They won't have mapping capabilities but you will be able to make a visible trail right on your screen and be able to back track by following your footsteps back to your starting point. One unit does come to mind....the Garmin EMap. It has mapping capabilities and I often see them sell for about 50 dollars on Ebay. They are quite reliable. Most come with PC cable and 12 volt adapter too but since these 2 items sell for close to 30 dollars each, you can expect to pay a few dollars more....but are they really necessary. These accessories do not make the GPS more accurate and reliable. These older units do eat batteries a bit faster. If you are real persistant, you can find a new or almost new Lowrance GO for 50 dollars. The Lowrance GO has a pretty good basemap of the U.S. Or one of those yellow Etrex...with no maps. Maps are fun to have if you want to hike to a location where you do not already know the coordinates but for geocaching, you already have the coordinates and you usually travel over a worn path or trail. Buying a GPS with mapping obliges you to buy the mapping software which costs over 100 dollars new, no matter what price the GPS is. I was lucky enough to buy a used Lowrance IFinder Pro with the Freedom Map of the province of Quebec (where I live), plus an exterior antenna and car adapter for 85 dollars plus shipping of about 12 dollars. But that is almost twice what you want to pay. I have used a Garmin 12 and a Lowrance GlobalNav 200 in the past. I bought them for around 20 dollars even though that was a few years ago. They both worked very well and I sold them for the price I had paid for them. I even made a PC cable and car adapter cable for the Garmin 12 for about 5 dollars each. There is a web site on how to make these cables and where you can buy the plug (5 dollars) that fits into these older Garmin units. They did not have WAAS. My IFinder has WAAS and I am not that much impressed by the WAAS. Even the old Garmin 12 could indicate which side of the road I was driving.....95% of the time. And this was just with the GPS unit sitting on the dash of my vehicle. My GlobNav 200 would even work on the rear seat of my vehicule. You can expect accuracy within 45 feet with any GPS unit. When hiking or exploring with these old units, all you have to do is make sure that you have a good view of the sky before creating a waypoint. However, I have seen some of these older units sell for the price of more recent units. Don't pay more than 20 or 30 dollars for such a unit in excellent condition. One nice unit to look out for is a gently used Garmin Legend. However, they are popular and are quickly snatched up by people wanting to buy their first GPS unit. This unit has a basemap that you can add more detailed maps. You should be able to find one for about 50 dollars...without cables and detailed mapping software. The Garmin Vista, which has more memory and larger screen sells for about 80 dollars. Search the other messages here in this forum about what to buy as a starter unit. There is a lot of info. Right now, you need more info.

I was out ice fishing the other day and had good luck fishing through my ice fishing hole. I had cut a hole through the ice in exactly the right spot. When I let my 2 ounce lead lure and bait, I could feel the lure bounce along the side of a large boulder. The area where I was fishing is very large and quite flat. There are hundreds of ice shantys and fishermen all over the place but I wanted to return exactly to the same fishing hole because the fish seemed to congregate near this large boulder. I powered up the IFinder Pro that I had just bought "used" and tried out the option of "averaging" before creating my waypoint. I waited about 15 seconds and had 30 points registered and then I created my waypoint. When I went out the next day, I quickly drove my vehicule right next to my original hole even though the wind and snow had almost obliterated all evidence of a fishing hole. Do any other GPS units have this option? I seem to remember my Garmin 12 having such a similar function. Should I have waited even longer before creating my waypoint? How accurate does this make the GPS? Any opinions about this function?

If it does rain, you can just store the PDA in a transparent plastique bag. I'm sure you can find a good transparent holster that will allow you to activate all the buttons on your PDA.

The EMap is a nice unit. It even has mapping. I have noticed that the older GPS units seem to have fewer problems than the newer units. Look at all the messages concerning the problems people are having with their new GPS units. If your EMap has worked well so far, it will work well for a long time to come....it's dependable and well worth keeping. If you do buy a newer GPS unit some day, keep the Emap as a back up or as a loaner.

When I want to pinpoint a location and save it as a waypoint, my IFinder Pro has a function called "averaging". When I go to enter a waypoint, I can choose this function and just wait a bit. The IFinder Pro indicates how many points it has in it's memory. The longer I stay where I am, the more points the IFinder records. It takes about 10 or 15 seconds to have about 30 points. When I choose "create", the IFinder averages out all the points before creating my waypoint. Today, I tried out the function on a waypoint that had 30 points before being averaged out. I was ice fishing and wanted to find a fishing hole that I had used the day before. The snow and wind had wiped out all traces of the hole but I got within a few feet of it and with careful scrutiny, I could see the disturbance in the snow where my previous fishing hole had been made.

I would not go any lower than a Garmin Legend. You can get a refurbished unit for about 75 dollars. The Legend C, Cx and HCx are more expensive.

The Etrex Legend is a great unit. It has mapping capabilities and WAAS which is a big leap over the many of the older GPS units. The more recent Legends have a more sensitive reciever (marked H in the model number), colour screen (marked C in the model number) and a slot for more memory (marked X in the model number) however, these options increase the price. You should be able to find a used or refurbished Legend for about 75 dollars.

I have an IFinder Pro. It's very similar to your unit but your unit has colour and is more recent. Your unit already has a basemap of the whole world. However, the basemap of the U.S. has more detail and many people don't even buy additional maps. However, for hunting and fishing, having more detailed maps is almost a must. You can buy Mapcreate or you can buy Freedom Maps on SD cards. I have Freedom maps of my area (Quebec) and it's great. Every little stream, pond, marsh and lake shows up on the screen. My older version of Freedom maps does not have the contour lines but this is not much of a problem since Quebec is not very mountainous anyway. The highest mountains are around 4000 feet. I use paper maps when I want to see the contour lines. Anyway, these mapping programs add mucho detail to the basemap. You add the maps via an SD card. The slot is in the battery compartment. You can use up to 1G SD cards....maybe even larger than that. You can even modify the view of the maps on the IFinder by removing or adding info on the SD card. Meaning, you can remove all the roads or railways or county lines etc. So far, my older version of Freedom maps is very accurate. There are a few tiny backwoods roads or small city streets that are not exactly in the right place. They are sometimes off by 10 to 30 feet or so. Buy a card reader if you do not already have one and buy an SD card. This way, when you you are saving a lot of waypoints, tracks, track points, trips, you can download them to the empty SD card and then empty your GPS's memory in order to add more waypoints, tracks etc. Great for those long camping/hiking/canoeing expeditions. When you get home, you can then download everything to a program on your PC. You can then reload that information back to the GPS anytime in the future if you want to.

When you want to ship to Canada, I would like to know.

In my area (Quebec), my WAAS signal seems a bit weak. The signal indicates about 50% on my IFinder. Often, I get no WAAS and when I do see that I have WAAS, the error does not change anyway. The least error I have gotten so far has been about 7 meters. Most of the time, I have between 10 and 15 meters of error. I can live with that since I have not done any geocaching yet. I am using 1 second update rate on my IFinder. I don't think I can even turn off the WAAS on my IFinder if I wanted to. I can't see how using WAAS will consume more power. I can see where using a slower update rate will decrease power consumption.

I somehow feel that Mappin' Mike has not told us everything.

I'm using Energizer NiMh 2500 mAh rechargeables in my IFinder and find they are great. I use a slow recharger which is much better than the fast chargers. When they are still warm out of the charger, they indicate 1.37 volts. 3 weeks later they indicate 1.34 volts which is way above the rated 1.2 volts for NiMh batteries. When I go on a camping trip, I bring along at least 1 extra set of recharged batteries and a few new alkaline batteries.

Ok....thanks for the info. As you can see, I know absolutely nothing about pocket PCs.

No....cell phones don't work as soon as I get about 20 miles north of where I live. All I want is to be able to view topographical maps that come as images in .gif or .img format. But, the image format can be modified to other formats if needed.

I doubt that any of the newer GPS units will take 30 minutes to find themselves anywhere on the planet. My old Garmin 45 did take maybe 20 minutes when I first initialized it after buying it "used" from somebody in the U.S. But, the Garmin 45 locked on to satelites via 8 sequential channels not 12 to 16 parallel channels on more recent GPS units. My Lowrance IFinder Pro has the basemap of the whole planet. However, the basemap of the U.S. has more detail. Since I live in Quebec, Canada, I have a Freedom Map (topographical map of Quebec) on an SD card. I bought my IFinder from a person who lives about 500 miles away from me. The IFinder found itself within 2 minutes when I first turned it on. However, if I do need to speed up the initialization process, I can choose the country of my choice before initialization. I can also change the language used on the device. What makes me wonder is why the Lowrance GPS units are not as popular as the Garmin units? Even on Ebay, the Lowrance handheld GPS units are rare when compared to the Garmin units.

I'm not looking for street info (there are no streets where I go) nor do I want to download points of interest or list geocaches (there are no geocaches where I go). All I want to know is which of the modestly priced pocket PCs allow me to view topographical maps so that I don't have to carry paper maps. I guess I should have asked this question in a GPS site where geocaching is not the principal activity.

Quote from Briansnat Why don't they just call us the United States like we call ourselves? It's not like we in the US don't call countries by their real name. Like Germany for instance. End of quote Germans do not use the word "Germany" as the name of their country. The French use the word "Allemagne" to name the country of Germany. You are going to have to imagine that you or the U.S. is not the center of the universe and accept that not all the countries in the world use the English version to name their own countries or other countries.

Can you tell me how the bag closes? Is it just a sealing strip like a zip-loc bag or does it also fold up at the top after the bag has been sealed?

I am pretty sure that there are Garmin sonars that allow you to plug your Garmin GPS to the unit and be able to use the screen or part of the screen of your sonar unit.

Which pocket pc should I buy to view topographical maps that I can download from the internet. I have a Lowrance IFinder Pro with an SD card containing the topographical map of the Province of Quebec. However, there are no contour lines on this version on the SD card. Sometimes, it would be nice to know what the terrain is like before I venture to some lakes off the beaten track. Yes, I can view paper maps but I would like to be able to download topographical maps from the internet to the pocket pc.

I used a Garmin 45 and then a Lowrance GlobalNav 200 everytime I went fishing or portaging or hunting. No maps but at least I could retrace my footsteps when going back to the car at night whether on foot or in my boat or canoe. On moonless nights, it can be very dark. On some of the lakes I fish, people get lost during the day. Now, I can fish for walleye at nightfall and not worry about finding my way back to my vehicle without running aground or losing my way. Yes, I carry a 1 million candle spotlight and a couple of other flashlights but they only warn me of the immediate danger in front of me. From far away, an uninhabited Northern Quebec shoreline looks the same anywhere you point the light. The GPS keeps me on track. I have just upgraded to a used Lowrance IFinder Pro with a detailed Freedom Map of Quebec on an SD card. I will now be able to go to some fishing spots very early in the morning before the sun comes up.

Thanks Manwithbeers, very informative. I have done more things with my IFinder Pro in the last few days. One thing I did was upgrade the thing. Since the upgrade from the Lowrance site would not work, Lowrance sent me the upgrade program via e-mail. Wow....much more info on the map now. There are 2 maps for Quebec. One for south of the 53 parallel and the other is for north of the 53 parallel. The map covers from the Ontario border all the way east to cover all of New Brunswick and maybe even a bit further east of that. Anyway, it's perfect for my use for now. I only paid 90 dollars for the IFinder, car cable, external passive antenna, plastic screen protector, case and Freedom map. The GPS only had 2000 miles on the odometer. It was used only once for a trip to southern U.S. Shipping was 13 dollars. I am very delighted with my buy. I am still trying to find out a way to reset the odometer to zero. When travelling the small roads in my area, I can see that I pass very close to many small lakes that I did not even know existed. Even the roads accessible only by ATV are on the maps. Rarely are any of the small roads and streets are off by more than a few feet. When walking, I get my walking speed as soon as I start walking. When standing still, the unit quickly goes to zero.