Styk

you might gear one up using their auto mount or rugged mount and an AC/DC adapter. However, more then likely the battery is not unique to Garmin although it says Garmin, it probably was supplies by a major battery manufacturer. However, any aftermarket charger for it woiuld probably be more then the rugged mount and as/dc adapter combo.

my pandigital planet sees my Montana as 2 moere drives the same as my laptop. that's internal memory and external microSD. right now this unit is $99 at Zellers here in Canada. it's available in many stores in the US as well for a similar price.

For $162, no matter what, it's a good deal for starting out. I have owned a colorado 300 and probably found over a 1000 caches with it. I moved on to the oregon 450 and after placing an anti-glare screen protector on it, the display was easier to see in bright light conditions but still darker then i would have liked. I have since jumped on the montana bandwagon. being older and at the stage where i need glasses to read if print is too fine. i find the duisplay to be extremely bright and Garmin has finally brought back the night mode (color inversion after sunset for better viewing. Touch screens in the oregon and montana are resistive unlike the iPhone's capitance screen so gloves are not an issue unless they are really bulky. over all the montana is a great all around unit from car to geocaching use.

Pandigital make several with miniUSB that are capable of also being a host port via a special adapter. the adapter grounds the unused pin signalling the tablet to act as host.

This is true but my macro launches with one click, I verify the database currently open is the one for the province I'm caching in, another click selects my caching area, a third click generates and transfers the GPX file to my GPS. The filter parametes are preset in the macro so they are always the same. This way, I consistently get the desired results in a few minutes.

They brought in distracted driving legislation here in New Brunswick, Canada last year. when i first read the bill, it was pretty draconian. Fortunately, the Police have chosen it seems to follow the spirit rather then the letter of the law. Basically, no touching of gps, cellphones, dvd players ( those can't even be in their view while driving) or other entertainment devices when the vehicle is in motion. CB radios can only be used by professional drivers, ie, taxi, ambulance, police and truckers. I upgraded my garmin auto GPS to the voice controlled 3790LMT. Sadly, the traffic functionality lacks voice control but the rest works well. The only hitch i find with the hands free Bluetooth on my iPhone is sometimes the phone doesn't get that the call has terminated and I have to touch the screen to manually terminate the call.

what model/brand of GPS are you using? Some of the newer ones have a filtering capabilities built in but you do tend to pay more for such units. GSAK is a very powerful front end for a database. It also has the ability via a macro programing language to allow a user to create personalized screens that would accomplish what you want like say, automatically filter off the previously found caches and load the remainder of the caches to your GPS, i have done this for my area, i can check on a checkbox imbedded in a local map and generate a gps file for a set distance around that point. I did this so i could connect the GPS, clear out the of GPX file and load a fresh one and hit the road in a few minutes.

You need to "project" a waypoint, see the oregon wiki on projection.

if you have a store that has multiple models/brands on display like REI or similar,. the best option is go look , touch feel take it out in bright light to see how it is. Being from the states you have a bit more options for brands then we do here north of the border. You have Garmin, Magellan, Delorme and Lowrance. in Canada, Garmin and Magellan are realistic as far as maps go. All offer both styles of interface, touch or button. I have owned a variety of Garmins and Magellans and find for me, the Garmin touch screen models are my preference but this is partially because i also ATV and being able to quickly mark a waypoint and edit it is a huge advantage. I currently am using a Montana 600 but i lucked in and got a terrific deal after they had been out for a couple months. I haven't yet seen such a sweet deal yet, close but not that low yet. mind you in Canada prices are always higher, smaller market and less competition.

i think you could also skip the balls and connecting arm and mount the cradle directly to the yoke base.

The LOC file hasjust minimal info, ie, name, gc number, latitude and longitude, cache rating and container type. The gpx file contains the cache listing text but no pictures. I believe you do not require a premium membership to download the GPX file from each cache page but you do if you want pocket queries which allow up to 1000 caches per query.

Bah Humbug!!!!! I was an early adopter of the Colorado and stayed with it for 2 years before moving on to the Oregon. Big difference in user friendliness. I found the hi res screen on the Oregon to be a disadvantage for older eyes and hard to see the screen under certain light conditions. Now I have the Montana 600 and the lower res screen IMHO is far better along with the larger display and brighter display. As far as geocaching, it's every bit as good as the Oregon and exceeds it in the sheer number of caches it can hold. I travel frequently in my job so loading an entire province of caches is possible for the smaller provinces. The abilty to filter caches on the GPS is a nice feature. The customization capabilties are excellent also.

Having one gps screen scratch minutes after turning it on for the first time, I now apply a a screen protector before i do anything else. I believe the reason you won't find a ZAGG screen protector is because they pulled them after a few screens cracked when the screen protector was removed. Too strong I guess.

Even better with GSAK!!

I have seen this a few times. sometimes connecting to the computer and moving the GPX file onto the computer and rebooting the GPS without a cache GPX file will clean things up. Reconnect and move the file back back onto the GPS. Might also be an issue with the SD card if they were stored on it. While the file is on the computer, pen it in mapsource and see if the caches display there. Is the GPS firmware up to date or close to being up to date?

WinCE PDAs with gps (either internal or via bluetooth) can also play Wherigo cartridges.

Tried using statue miles on my 60Cx, hated the way it switched between miles, yard and feet. Now I use metric and it only switches from kms to meters. Luckily that corresponds to Canada's units of measure also.

Hmmmm, lack of experience, I think the only experience lacking is the experience of owning and living with a GPS that sticks. I first encountered the sticky issue with a Colorado, talk about being used as a beta tester. I'm talking freezing up 40-50 meters, not feet, meters. Not much fun when caching with a group and they stop to sign the cache and your still walking hoping it unfreezes. Getting verbal jabs like; "Throw the rig away!", "Get a real GPS!!",or I'm saying to myself "Oh look, I'm walking in the lake". Inexperience my a**. Pure and simple firmware/hardware issues. Had to carry my 60Cx as a backup. The sticky issue is documented and not a matter of experience or lack of. It's real and very aggravating. Even the Legend HCx had issues with the compass indicating the opposite directionas one got closer to the cache. Garmin like many companies is locked in a business model of producing new models regardless of the state of their current models. Like waging a war on to many fronts, a losing proposition. look at companies that are big and successful yet their product lineup is small. Prime example is Apple.

Love the voice activation part. Play with it awhile before going anywhere to familiarize with the available commands. sure beats playing with it while driving. Good to search for spots along the way before hand so they show up in the recently found list, makes for easier searching.

i had a blackberry tour, phone wise, best phone i have owned, trackball, well, that was a nightmare. On my next upgrade, i went with the iPhone 4S, phone part is not real good but everything else is great. if BB could make a touch screen and operating system as slick as Apple they would rule the roost. iphone is very intuitive, shame really that their phone part sucks.

Haha, just sneak around your car looking at your GPS if you are having car trouble.

Hey cache Pack Long time no see Easy smeasy. Extract the files from the PQ and copy them to either the internal memory or if you have a microSD card stalled, to the card. They need to be copied to the [gps drive letter]:/garmin/gpx folder. If you have the memory card, you will need to create these directories first. I rename the files to something else and include the month and day so i know how old they are at a glance. This also helps when you load a new set of files from a new PQ.

I was an early adopter of the Colorado. Only had one issue other then the numerous software bugs but they eventually got most of those worked out although it took a long time. The hardware issue was with the wheel. It started acting erratically, was really evident when trying to add a notes to cache finds, rotate and just as I would slow down near the letter I wanted, it would jump past the desired letter, repeatedly. Irritating to say the least and when it started impacting normal operation of the unit I called Garmin and they sent me a new wheel. Duh, I tried the tell the CSR that I was confident it was not that but what would I know, with only 25 years in the electronics maintenance and repair field. Anyways, a week later I'm on the phone again because, surprise surprise, the wheel didn't fix it. Sent it to the one and only Canadian repair center where after 4 weeks and 2 phone calls later they decided to replace it. No further hardware issues with the replacement. When they brought out the Oregon series, it seemed like they pretty much abandoned the Colorado users. I stuck with the Colorado for a couple of years but finally got tired of waiting for colored tracks which I believe they added to the Oregon on the first or second firmware update. I upgraded to the Oregon 450, loved the touch screen but the USB plug on the bottom was problematic when used on my ATV. Also found the "Hi Res" screen to be hard to read for aging eyes. So along about 6 months or so it started acting wonky and within 2 days became pretty much unusable, sent it for repairs and got a replacement which worked fine and is still working as far as I know. I upgraded to the Montana once the firmware seemed to becoming mostly bugfree. After a month it started with the screen calibration issue, sent it for repair and in 3 weeks got a replacement. I guess they had quite a batch of defective displays. So far, no more issues and the Montana has been the best I've seen, large, bright screen, easy to read "low res" screen. Not to mention rotating screen capability uber configurable! Edge connector for power in cradle saves the USB port for file transfer.

Could be worse, online log but nothing in the cache logbook.

I was disappointed with my 4S, one cache which was on a guard rail with only telephone/hydro poles around led me me around for quite a while. Finally, I used my geo sense to find it while the iPhone was still way off, like 15 meters. Sometimes I find certain areas are like a dead zone with the gps acting erratic. maybe it's the particular satellite pattern that day, I dunno. In any case, with my older eyes, I prefer a larger screen, when I seen the Montana, I knew that it was perfect for me. I had a Oregon 450 previously and found the hi res screen was actually hard to see. Other then that it was a very good gps. The Montana is better still with a more easily read screen and the abilty to hold 12000 caches. Rotating screen orientation and battery life plus highly customizable screens. My personal favorite, the ability to supply power other then through a mini USB connector.