I am a complete newbie to this sport and clearly have a lot to learn. I thought I could get by without reading a big book on the topic, but I'm having my doubts. I bought the recommended Garmin e-trex from Amazon.com. I have a Dell Inspirion 15100 laptop running Windows XP home edition. Silly me, I thought that was all I needed. I then realized I needed the interface cable to be able to download the waypoints. I dutifully ordered a Garmin PC Interface Serial Port Cable with a standard 9-pin D connector. I plugged that into the Targus serial reset thingy into which all sorts of other cables from the computer go and proceeded to geocaching.com where I found the free download which would enable me to download the *.LOC files. I tried to download one and keep getting a message that says "No data was received from the GPS! You should quit this program and turn your GPS off before proceeding." Did that. Same thing when I tried again. And again. And again. I am clearly choosing the transfer info TO GPS option, but the message keeps saying nothing RECEIVED FROM the GPS. The computer does not appear to recognize the connection of the cable. I am not very computer literate, so any help anyone can provide should be dumbed down so I can understand it. I was so excited by the prospect of going geocaching, and this whole computer thing is totally depressing me! Is there a way to somehow put in waypoints manually on the GPSer? I couldn't even figure out Garmin's instructions on that. I must be a total technophobe, yet I am proficient in information searches and using Word and other software. What am I doing wrong? Should I just break down and to buy the GPS Made Easy book?
Thanks for any help you can give.
