northernpenguin

I'm looking at a map of Halifax right now in DR North America 2.00f. Which cities are you missing? They only promise 'major' cities in Canada for POI & Address search, and city-to-city routing everywhere else.

I bought both. I use the TOPO (Canada not 3D) when I'm near a cache and DirectRoute to get to the cache site. Both have extensive POI info. You only need DirectRoute if you want street directions and 'urban' features like city parks listed. Having said that -- DirectRoute has become my favorite and hence default map set.

Put your eXplorist into NMEA mode ( Menu / Adv. Features / Communications / NMEA ) to talk with 3rd Party software. It will create a virtual com port on your machine (XP anyway) and you can use that to talk to the software.

The way that card is placed in there though, I'm not sure how often I really would want to take the SD card out. My thinking is more along the lines of buying a big enough card and leaving it in there. The actual 'slot' that pops up feels way too fragile for my liking. Especially for 'in the field' swaps. For the price of SD cards these days, I'd just buy another one for the MP3. Although I'll admit -- when I run out of space on the digital camera card, I can always harvest the SD from the eXplorist for 'one more' shot. As long as the camera is a standard FAT filesystem on it. On another note, I haven't figured out a way to format SD cards in the actual unit, so when I tossed the card from my MP3 player into the 600, it froze on boot (no splash, just a flicker and off). My MP3 player uses a proprietary filesystem so I can't take my own songs back off the card, or inter-operate with other devices. Eventually ended up formatting the card in my *camera* and then it worked fine. I would think they'd have provided a method to make a 'foreign' card usable.

My eTrex Legend has survived quite a few falls from holding height. It's not holding up bad at all. The new eXplorist, on the other hand is transported only in a suspended antigravity pod with several pillows underneath it and trained FBI agents willing to dive in and save it in the event of a fall. At least until the cases are available

Thanks Keith. That's pretty slick.

I know it will charge from USB power. I've done it twice now from my laptop. Don't remember the cable orientation I used, but I know it worked. I'll take a look for the universal, I prefer the Maggie branded cable as I have a vehicle mount and taking the USB cable in and out would be a pain. Not the end of the world though.

Good point. I've fired off my support request to Magellan. Now my major question is --- can I find a 12V car adapter / spare battery anywhere in Toronto area (preferred) or Canada. I've got a 24 hour geocaching marathon coming up and 17 hours of battery isn't going to cut it. I've checked with LeBaron, and it's even in their catalog but their staff don't respond well when I enquire about it. I believe it was P/N 730387.

This 'locking up' business will probably be a firmware fix. Seems like a software glitch to me. All the 'sensors' on my 600 work great, it's just when I muck with the USB cable that I can get it to crash - and not every time. This type of thing is almost to be expected for early adopters.

One thing to note - if you were using the RSS feeds before the server move, you will need to delete and re-add the feeds as the actual server that sends the feed changed.

I ordered mine from GPSCity.ca back in early March. Played with Direct Route NA tonight. What an awesome piece of software on the 600.

Well it wasn't changing the mode that made it crash. This time all I had to do was yank the cable before I turned it off. OS is WinXP. Other than that, which I can work around by turning the thing off before I unplug -- I love my 600!!!!

I've ordered several times from GPSCity.ca. They've been good to me with decent prices every time. The only issue I've ever had wasn't their fault (Magellan delayed production) and they kept me informed throughout the process.

Same thing happens for me in Firefox. It's a Macromedia/Firefox thing apparently. The links comes up as http://ghcaching.servehttp.com/x./home.php instead of http://ghcaching.servehttp.com/home.php . Probably some weirdness in the "action" property on the link.

Happy times! I've got my eXplorist 600 now. In Canada! I used mine to download some waypoints (USB Down) and then switched the USB mode to "Power only" and crashed the unit. Had to yank the battery. I don't think it likes having the mode changed while it's connected.

I spotted an Explorist 500 on the shelf at a Walmart in Mississauga last weekend. I'm holding out for the 600 model though.

Well GHAGAFAP III was my first cache and I've become a geocaching addict over the fall & winter. Will definately try to attend this one.