Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hide

Sorry, you can't change it on the handhelds.

Just what is a podcast? I may just learn something today, It doesn't say Hermit for nothing. BTW, My Montana is at the post office, be there Monday to retrieve it. The Podcasts we listen to are MP3 format sound recordings, mainly from BBC and CBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts We especially enjoy the Friday Night Comedies: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fricomedy Here's the CBC site: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/ I'm sure you could find many in the US as well. Here's the NPR Podcast site: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

The onboard speaker is not very good but it does have a line out which we plan to plug into the car to hear through the stereo. The media player is really slick; we load podcasts to it so when we're traveling we have something other than radio to listen to, and still get navigation messages.

I own both a 62S and an Oregon 550 and the screen resolution on the Oregon is far superior to the 62, so my 62 stays at home all the time, and the Oregon is always in my pocket ready to cache. I like the touch screen more than the buttons as it's easier to use with gloves on. Effectively the Oregon has "larger buttons" because they are on screen. And I've never had any problem with the touch screen getting dirty. The one advantage the 62 has is proximity alarms. But the Oregon has a really beautiful 3D map screen. Anyway, my choice is always the Oregon.

Actually it's very easy. Drop a pushpin by touching your screen where you want the starting point to be, then scroll the screen by dragging it so that the place you want to measure to is under the pushpin, and you'll see the distance listed above in the text area. Thanks, I like this suggestion better than your first, BUT if I drop a pushpin at location A then move the screen so that location B is under the pin then the display only shows the distance from me to location B. Did I misunderstand? No, I think I misunderstood how that pushpin thing worked. Perhaps creating a route will be most accurate.

Actually it's very easy. Drop a pushpin by touching your screen where you want the starting point to be, then scroll the screen by dragging it so that the place you want to measure to is under the pushpin, and you'll see the distance listed above in the text area.

One easy way to do that would be to create a route, set it to navigate offroad, then look at the details.

The file is called startup.txt. Editing it in a text editor like Notepad is best. Not a good idea to open it in MS Word, for instance.

Setup/Marine/Appearance Navaids?

The Cx has no barometric sensor or electronic compass to use up more power, would be my guess... My Cx has both. I don't know what difference would cause a different battery life or even how long my batteries will last since I've only had it a week. The Cx does NOT have a barometric sensor or electronic compass. Read the manual.

I have put maps both in the internal memory and on the card without any problems. The main reason to stay with the card is in case there turns out to be a problem you can just restart without the card. Good to know... I didn't want to be first to try...

I picked the 2xx profile and it seems to work fine. The macro seems mostly concerned with name length and text length for different models, but I admit I haven't studied it in detail. On the Montana itself, I initially set proximity to "Prompt" but found it too irritating. Need to do some experimenting. Thanks for this. Mike

The electronic compass is especially useful - if you don't have it, the gps requires you to be moving so it'll know which way you're going or facing.

Yes, they all have fairly dismal battery life compared to the 60 series.

Settings/Navigation, then click the menu options on the right - not sure how to describe the icon - the three horizontal lines... Then click "Map Info" to choose. But make sure you don't upload maps to the 295 itself - they should go on a Micro SD card in the slot on the gps. I'd be quite concerned that uploading to the 295 would overwrite the onboard maps.

The Cx has no barometric sensor or electronic compass to use up more power, would be my guess...

Garmin does have rather limited view of how to display caches. Everything is a treasure chest. I use the the ThePropers macro with GSAK to make actual symbols show up. The problem with this is the Garmin geocaching mode does not work because it is tied to the treasure chest icon. It's been a while since I've owned a 60CSx but I seem to recall that by default the gps does use the treasure chest icons, open and closed, but you can change the icons you use. So if you use the Proper's cache icons, you can switch the 60 to search for whichever icon you have set for caches via GSAK and the Proper's macro.

We bought a wireless photo frame for the MIL that has an email address associated with it. We send to hername@kodakpulse.com and it shows up on her frame. That should work nicely with the Montana too! Anything special we should know about the GSAK macro and the Montana?

Here's another useful trick - a way to post photos to web albums from the 295W or other mobile device. It's specific to Google's Picasa: http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=83342 Works really well too! I've already set it up and uploaded a test image. Here's a bit of the description from the site: Use the email "Subject" line to add captions or to include the photos in a specific album. If the email "Subject" line matches an existing online album title, your photos will be uploaded to that album. Otherwise the 'Subject' line will instead be added as a caption and the photos will be placed in the Drop Box album. Learn more about the Drop Box album. Here's my first upload, of a picture I used the 295W/Montana to take. Not a bad picture, if I say so myself.

No, not all DVD maps are device specific and certainly Topo Canada is not and has never been. I have it on my 62S, my Oregon 550, 295W, Legend HCx and it's all from the same source.

I just got my 62s the other day, so please give me the quick & dirty on how you get it to do that. It's not simply a function of indicating a cache is "Found" in the GPS, is it? That's half the job done. Then when you next plug your gps into your computer, and log on to Geocaching.com, go to "Your Profile", then scroll down and search the right column for where it says "Access Your Field Notes for supported GPS devices and applications." Once there you select Garmin as the manufacturer, and then browse on your gps to the folder called Garmin, and look for the file called "Geocache_visits.txt" as seen below on my iMac computer.

Wait, your Garmin 62s sends Field Notes to your geocaching.com account? If so, I have yet to discover that feature… Yes it does. So do the Oregons, Dakotas, Colorados and many other units from other manufacturers.

Maps are not unlockable in the gps. Go to Setup/Map/Map Information/Select Maps and see what maps are on it. As I mentioned, there is nothing to unlock for Topo Canada, but you may have some other maps listed there which are locked.

No matter how much space you have on an SD card, your 530 will only hold 500. It's hard coded into the unit. This info comes from the 530 Specs page here: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=8523 Waypoints/favorites/locations: 500

Just connect your gps to the computer in mass storage mode and save the unzipped query files to the Garmin/GPX folder on either your 62 or the sd card you might have in it. No need for EasyGPS or GSAK unless you want to use those programs for other reasons. I have cpoied the GPX file and when I extract it in the garmin gpx file in the gps, I get the caches. Now the question is how do I delete caches once they are placed on this 62s? You can't remove individual caches. After you find caches, replace the file which includes your found caches with updated query files to update your gps. The updated file will not include the caches you found, so the gps will have those caches removed that way.