Wolfeitz

Sorry, I forgot one HUGE plus about this unit. The Oregon 6xx will hold up to 4 million geocaches (roughly double the amount of all geocaches in existance).

I do not have one yet but I have been researching them quite extensively so I will answer to the best of my second hand knowledge. Anyone, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong!! 1. The 650 has a camera, which does geotagging. Can you switch this off before taking a picture, so when I upload a photo of the final of a multi/mystery, the coords are not in the jpg-exif? Unknown whether you can switch on/off in the unit however location info is quite easy to remove from the picture yourself before uploading from your computer. 2. Navstar-GPS and Glonass combined. Do I notice this in improved accuracy in the city? My 300 is often 20-30 off, resulting in looking on the wrong side of the street. Outside the city, I have often 3m accuracy, which is OK. But under foliage the 300 is also not to good. Is the 650 a big improvement? This is the main reason for getting the 650 instead of my trusted 300. :-) Out in the open country this shouldn't be any more accurate because of GLONASS. GPS technology has likely improved the accuracy over the 300 so you will likely have some improvement there. Where you should notice a big difference is in confined spaces. In tight spots with limited sky visible, having more possible satellites to access should mean you have a better chance of getting a lock on the number of satellites you need to pinpoint your location. The other big improvement with the 6xx series is apparently the satellite lock time - it seems to be quite fast. 3. Battery lifetime: do I get my 10 hours back with the battery pack? 10 hours? No. I think they are touting 6'ish however, if you are in the car then plugging the unit in should charge the batteries. With my Montana I would go on an all day caching run in the car and end the day with my battery full because it was constantly charging in the car. 4. Cache description can now hold pictures. (I guess a GSAK export-macro will come available, did not check it yet). Can you choose which pics it will download? Are spoiler-pics (yes, I am lazy in that way :-)) useable with the screen resolution? ..no info - haven't tried exporting in GSAK with pics however you can get the latest builds here which support the Oregon 6xx series. 5. The Oregon 300 could take a drop (mine did, a few times :-)). How does the 650 look in this way? Does the screen look as if it scratched soon? The first video I saw of the 600 was one guy tossing it to another and totally fumbling the catch. It bounces then slid across the asphalt and appeared to be fine. 6. About the touch screen: when I am searching fr a cache, I have the GPS in my hand. When getting the box (or when muggles appear), I put it in my pocket. Is there a very quick way to lock the screen? Can the second sidebutton be configured this way? I believe the 6xx series does have a configurable button which can likely be used for this purpose though I am not certain. 7. The Oregon 650 has bluetooth. Can I connect it to my iPhone, to get updated caches (status, logs) or newly published caches (from email) into the device? Yes!! I believe you can only access it via the Basecamp app however which, at the moment, is only available on he iPhone. Supposedly a droid version will be available soon. I'm not sure whether there is any other way it interacts with the bluetooth yet. These units also have ANT+ capability which means they can communicate with the Garmin Tempe, Chirp, heart rate monitor, and cadence/tempo sensor.

Myotis - you ROCK! Installed My Trails and presto it showed up in MapSource. Uninstalled and reinstalled the Florida Topo's and presto, there they were! Thank you so much for such an easy fix!!

I am...

Yup - read those and followed the instructions but the maps do not show up in the newest version of mapsource once installed.

Has anyone successfully loaded free topo's from gpsfiledepot (or related site) onto their Montana 600 series? If so, HOW?!? Thanks!

Whoever it was that asked - yes, I'd take $285

Very very very accurate GPS, easy to use, absolutely fantastic for GeoCaching No original box but unit is in beautiful condition (only 2 months old) - never ever dropped. I have everything that came with it - USB, TOPO 9.0 disks, SPOT (never used and just replaced with a brand new device due to recall), lanyards $320

I was hoping against all odds that there was a magical way to convert my iPhone 3GS into a good GPS. Here is my experience Geocaching with the Bad Elf dongle. My iPhone with the Bad Elf dongle was much more accurate in open spaces. It did also do a decent job of tracking me through the house. Out in the woods however it did not do what I needed it to do for geocaching. It took some time (several minutes) but Bad Elf was able to get a GPS lock while on a path in a densely wooded area so, if I were only trying to use it to find my way it would have been fantastic. Finding geocaches though is an all together different story. Unassisted, my iPhone 3GS had me, pretty consistently, within 60 feet of the cache (in the woods). With the Bad Elf receiver on, that was reduced significantly to about 30 feet. Unfortunately it still kept readjusting and bouncing me all around all the while stating that it's accuracy range was quite good when, in reality, the cache was not even within it's accuracy range. a friend with a Garmin Oregon 450 was also getting bounced around a bit however his readings were all within about 10' of the actual cache and he made the find while I was still looking on the wrong side of the path. Would I recommend the Bad Elf GPS? IF you do not need a rapid satellite lock and IF you do not need absolute precision while tromping through the woods then Absolutely yes. Unfortunately, for Geocaching in the woods it just couldn't quite produce the results I need.