Scabbers

Quick comparison from my 6 months of experience. Last June I got a Magellin snap-on for Palm V. I used it for 6 weeks and never really had an issue with reception, treecover. Frequently, it even could get a lock in my house. Then, in late July, I upgraded to a Garmin GPS V. Plain & simple ... I love the unit, love the maps, love the autorouting, but reception IS NOT as good as the cheapo Magellin/Palm combo. Here in the mid-atlantic states ... treecover is dense & heavy in the summertime. I'm talking big, tall leafy Oak, beech, & maple trees. The GPS V loses lock and bounces around more than I was used too. Also, I notice that if I move my GPS V off my dashboard into the center of my car it WILL, for sure, lose lock. Still, I've learned to deal with it and I rarely ever take the Magellin/Palm with me anymore. But to answer your question directly, my feeling is that Magellins are way better than the Garmins for holding lock under borderline conditions. Now here's where I go from fact to opinion ... I think the GPS V is probably nearly the best of the Garmin line, simply becaise the antenna is larger. I have no doubt that an external antenna on my car would be even better (never tried it). Also, our best friends recently started geocaching with an eTrex. They ALWAYS complain about losing lock under the trees ... seems MUCH worse than my GPS V. Again, the smaller, internal antenna on the eTrex is likely causing problems in borderline areas ... same problem as the Nokia 8000-series cell phones.

If the probem you describe is waht I think it is, it was discussed extensively recently in this thread It only happens on firmware version 2.05, when moving the cursor with the display in portrait mode and autorouting on. It appears as though firmware version 2.07 fixes the problem.

Thanks so much to everyone who replied. This has been a big help. Based on some of the comments here, I don't think there is anything defective about my unit. I've downloaded the 2.07 firmware and will load it into my unit in a day or so. I'm convinced this will correct the pixel-garbage troubles. I did confirm that this only happens in portrait mode, where left/right scrolling puts bigger demands on the display buffer. Regarding signal loss ... it's not that frequent and mostly happens in the car driving through very heavy woods. I agree with the above comment about keeping the antenna perpendicular to the ground and not letting your body block the signal. The only problem I'm still struggling with is getting MapSource 4.01 to be compeletely unlocked (as it should be from the start with GPS V Deluxe version. I'm sure I'll figure this out once I can grap a full hour or so to work on it. thanks again ... Scott

back on 26 July, I was thrilled when my new Garmin GPS V Deluxe arrived from www.gpscity.com Now, overall it's working fine for both car navigation and geocaching. But i have a few complaints. 1) Reception is not the greatest. My basis for comparision is the Magellan GPS Companion for Palm Vx, and I have to say that the Magellan/Palm virtually never lost lock under treecover, and occasionally even works indoors. I have come to expect that the GPS V will temporarily lose lock in heavily wooded areas. Sometimes it will also lose lock when driving down a heavily tree-lined street. Now, I have learned that no handheld GPS unit will lock-on all the time. I've also read many comments here that the GPS V is MUCH better that the e-trex series for example. If that's true, then bsed on my GPS V refrence, the e-Trex would be virtually unuseable in the woods. Are my expectations just too high or what? Do I have to wait for winter for reliable performance ... after all, its just leaves right? 2) A couple of times the GPS V display has gone wacky. Specifically, when I move the pointer around on an active street-level map page, sometimes the display shows pixel garbage. If I keep scrolling, it will generally go blank and quickly recover with a normal, refreshed display. I can only describe it as though the display buffer gets overloaded and just gives up and displays digi-trash. Has anyone else seen anything similar? Overall, I can deal with these 2 minor and infrequent problems, but it just seems to me I shouldn't have to with a $420 unit. Honestly, I also don't really want to send it back, because I waited a month to get it and don't want to give it up ... even for 2 weeks. So what do y'all think ... any comments are appreciated.

I have never seen a GPS add on for a Palm M105. I do know that Magellan makes one for the Palm V/Vx and the M500. I have been using the Magellan GPS Companion with my Palm Vx. Accuracy and functionality is fine, but I've already decided to upgrade (GPS V on order). The primary reason is that I'm afraid of getting my expensive Palm wet, dirty or dropped on a rock. Also, with teh stylus, it takes 2 hands to jump around the Palm menu and I want something more simple. I bought a high end GPS for driving and geocaching, but the $100 eTrex would meet all my needs if it were only for GeoCaching.

Walmart has the Audiovix unit here

Today .. I spotted the GPS V on sale at Amazon for $355. and Amazon has free shipping for all orders over $50. I presume you can do the same upgrade with Garmin.

I just got off the phone with tvnav.com about this issue. It seems they sold out of Garmin GPS V Deluxe units yesterday (8-Jul). Their price was $415 + $10 S&H. They still have the orig. GPS V in stock. Price would be $360 + $10 S&H. If you buy now, you can upgrade to the new software for $50 with all-unlock. So for $420 delivered you have an identical package to the GPS V Deluxe. The only snag is that you have to do the upgrade directly with Garmin thru the mail ... who know how long it will take the disc. If it's the typical 4-6 weeks, summer is gone. I'm gonna keep looking for the GPS V Deluxe ... GPSCity says they are shipping on 7/18.

I know I chiming in late here, but I'm a newbie to geocaching.com. I ONLY have experience with a Palm Vx + Magellan GPS Companion (which I got for $79. at Amazon). I have to say that I have very few complaints. I had the yellow eTrex, but returned it when I realized it would not do street-level mapping. The Magellan gives me both street mapping/tracking (MapComp) and the NavComp software for geocaching. NavComp (version 1.0) has gotten me to 5/5 caches and typically gives accuracy to about 15', even under very heavy treecover. This past weekend it read 0.0 ft. at a cache site. It seems to swithch form x.x miles to x.x feet at about 400 ft. range. This seems reasonable to me considering that 0.1 miles = 528 ft. GPS Battery life is ~10 hrs (I carry spares) and the Palm Vx internal rechargeable batteries always go longer than 10 hrs. All that said, now I want to upgrade to a GPS V for a more rugged/water resistant handheld and turn-by-turn driving directions. I'll try to post a comparison in a few weeks, but the Magellan GPS Companion was a great and cheap way for me to start.

Hi Mike ... I have the Magellin GPS snap-on for Palm V. I started geocaching about a month ago & have found 5/5 attempts so far. Since Palm & Visor both use Palm OS, I would expect similar performance for you. I'm actually quite amazed at the performance. I've had excellent accuracy, even for caches where others have reported signal loss under heavy treecover. My last find was dead-on accurate (reading 0.0 ft at the find) the average seems to be within about 10' - 15' of the cache. The downside is that your Visor/Palm is not waterproof and not rugged. You could easily drop it into a creek/lake, etc. I'm always thinking about limited battery life (10 hrs for the GPS, ??? for your PDA - whichever is less) Also, the included mapping software is not great. Mine actually runs 2 programs ... one for street maps (poor) and another for navigation/hiking (OK). I use the NavComp software for geocaching, which seems to work fine. Also, mine has no WAAS capability, no averaging and limited waypoint memory. All that said, it has worked fine, but I'm now in the market for an upgrade ... probably a Garmin GPS V.