Mosaic55

One thing I haven't seen in the Topo 8 description is whether or not it includes the Palm PDA (OS 5) support as Street Atlas does. Does anyone know?

Good to know! MS has a free 60 day trial of Streets and Trips that can be downloaded from their web site, so I'm checking it out now.

Thank you embra and keddy4u for suggesting Topo! I've just been reading about it and it sounds like a great alternative. Amazon sells separate east and west region Topo 8 packages for what looks like a good price. Since East would cover everyplace I usually go, it's actually less than I was going to spend on one of the other products. And I'll check out that forum too, Caleb!

No one has comments on either package?

Which one is better for driving directions to area of the cache? I'd like to be able to load a gpx file and then have the program provide directions to nearest cache. If it could plot a loop visiting several caches that would nice to have. I have a new netbook and I'd like to get some mapping/navigation software for it. I have S&T 2007 and the USB gpsr that came with it, but this old version is rather weak at providing directions. I'm leaning toward Street Atlas just because of Microsoft's activation requirements (can't install the same copy on both desktop and laptop) but if there was some compelling reason to use Streets and Trips I'd like to hear about it. And, another question, is there any advantage to the "plus" version if I do get Street Atlas?

It looks like the Western U.S. update is the one you need. Roughly speaking if you were to draw a line straight South from the western edge of the Chicago suburbs then everything to the West of that line would be on the Western U.S. update. Happy caching! That sound inconvienent for someone who lives in the western suburbs, no? Or is there an alternative such as "midwest"?

Double post

Sanyo Eneloops (hybrid) and LaCrosse charger. Costco seems to be the least expensive place to buy the Eneloops. They last longer in my camera than anything else I've tried.

http://coord.info/textmark.aspx this is pretty cool. Is there a way to extend the interface to retrieve the most recent log notes? I'm thinking of somthing like GEOC 1(GC#) to get most recent log; GEOC 2(GC#) to get 2nd most recent log and so on. [even if it's only the first 100 or so characters of a log entry, it would be useful]

That's where I found it. There aren't any reviews. I've only found one online (from Amazon) saying that it was really bad (1 star) mainly because the maps weren't current. I'm looking at this for my first GPS, so I don't know too much about what I need, but I thought that maps weren't that important for geocaching... As far as the rest of the forum, the only thing anyone talks about is having to convert the location files to a different format, which I personally don't think is that bad as it was also mentioned that there were programs available for this. I want to know more about the actual unit. Seeing as the cheapest Garmin unit that connects to a computer via USB is $130+ and the cheapest Delorme that does that is $150+, I want to know if, at this price, the Bushnell is a better buy. I bought one of these from newegg (before reading this thread!) and it's not as bad as those reviews say. It is huge! it's twice as large as my exporist 210, although it doesn't feel much heavier and the size allows for a nice large easy to read screen. The first thing I did was to upgrade the firmware from the Bushnell site and download the updated PC companion software. I ignored the CD that came with the unit. You need a micro SD card reader to transfer the firmware. (I already had such a reader for my cell phone.) The included SD card is 512mb. It looks like it is going to be more accurate than the exporist, just sitting on the window sill on a rainy day it picks up about 9 satellites and reports accuracy of 28 ft compared to the 7 or 8 the explorist sees and its' report of 65ft accuracy. (Even my old, cheap car GPS is better than the explorist at locking on satellites) The base map is pretty useless, I was disappointed to find out no better maps were included. It's $30 a year for unlimited downloads of the topo maps and aerial satellite views. Map downloads work fine, although not the fastest and a bit non-intuitive to do the first time. I was able to download .loc files from GC.com and used GPSbabel to create .gpx files. Then used the Busnell online map download page to translate into the Onix format and upload to the unit. I did this for the 12 or 15 caches nearest my house and maps that cover the immediate area and it all worked just fine. Things got somewhat rougher when I tried larger area maps all at once. The web interface hung and I had to restart IE a few times before the downloads worked and also limit the number of maps downloaded at once. Also with more maps and waypoints loaded the unit started really slowing down on map refreshes. Also the unit hung once and I had to pull the battery to get it to restart. Deleted some maps and waypoint from the unit and it hasn't hung again. I don't think this would work out for power cachers, but I'm anything but. I think I can live with the limits it imposes. I haven't done any caching at all in a while ( I got frustrated at not being able to find some caches that others were finding easily) but now that there are a few new caches near my house and one very close to my work, I want try again. Also looking at the Waymarking site. Loading one or two dozen caches and associated maps at a time (if that's what it takes to keep it working smoothly) will be acceptable. The downloadable maps seem current enough, showing the 355 tollway extension and a recent nearby street closure at least. I am doubtful of the waterproof claims because the plug that seals the charger and USB ports falls out too easily. Maybe there are more capable devices now (even at this price point) but I really liked the idea of having the satellite views available and the QVGA screen. I don't expect to do much with it until spring, so we;ll see how it goes then.

How many feet are in .001 of a minute? I'm at 41° 45.629' North. I know I've seen something about conversions posted before but I can't find it now.

Bring back virtual caches.

I wouldn't do any multis that required any driving between stages. My (obviously naive) expectation is that all stages are within walking/hiking distance of the beginning.

What I want to know is if the "missing" stage really is missing, have you gone out to check on it? If you're no longer able to go out and check on the cache frequently, I think you should be prepared for previous finders to step in and start helping out, even if it's in a manner you wouldn't choose. And given what I know right now, I think it was a valid find.

Maybe everyone would get a basic logging code, premium members would, in addition, be allowed to generate one special code each month that they could use for an extra "game" such as logging "I met Jeremy standing under an Oak tree while wearing a purple shirt" I'd like to see that logging a meeting would require one or both participants to record the GPS coordinates of the meeting.

I thought CR was kidding. The Google Maps website photos and the old version of Google Earth are still right on the money as far as I can see. If there really was a legal sanction those'd have to be obfuscated as well.

I'm finding the Google Earth satellite photos to be most helpful in finding parking and trails.

I agree! (sorry, I couldn't resist)

I don't see what's wrong with having more attributes available for filtering. There's over 2500 caches within 50 miles of my house. If there's be some way to further filter which of the 2500 might be most worthy of my gas money, why not make it available? Not that every attribute that anyone can possibly conceive of has to be supported, but maybe some sort of poll or referendum would work. Any attribute that gets at least x number of votes could get added to the web site. An ALR attribute would get my vote.

2460, I'm in Illinois, southwest of Chicago

These are school playgrounds? For some reason, that bothers me a little more than if they were playgrounds in public parks. I see the first person to log your cache mentioned a no tresspassing sign, can the counting be done from outside the posted area? If this cache were nearby, I'd definately go and check it out (non-school hours), but depending on exactly how the area is setup and how busy the playground was, I might or might not actually attempt to complete it. I think the DNF log is a fair warning to others that circumstances may be a bit uncomfortable for some and discretion is advisable.

From the letterboxing yahoo group ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/letterbox-usa/ ): "The Letterboxing North America site will be offline until we can move to a new hosting service. Unfortunately, the low cost web hosting that we've been using can't accept the increasing load that we're putting on the shared server as letterboxing has grown over the years. More details on where we'll go next soon." http://www.atlasquest.com/ is the other major listing site, but I'm having trouble getting that URL to work right now either.

Dang! I hate it when I have to agree with Mushtang. There seems to be a relentless drive to make somebody else responsible for cachers' behavior. If a cache is in a dangerous place, and a cacher gets hurt doing the cache, then it's somehow Groundspeak's fault that that cache got listed. Or if the cache is placed in an off-limits area and somebody gets in trouble for ignoring "No Trespassing" signs, that is Groundspeak's fault too. What rubbish. Cachers need to take responsibility for their own actions in seeking a cache. If getting to the cache looks too dangerous or illegal, then just don't do it! I'll third that! Posting "permission" on the web site could even backfire if it makes the cache seeker over-confident about wandering into places where they shouldn't be. This could happen because of an error in co-ordinates or straying from landowner A's property to adjacent Landowner B's property where there is no permission to cache granted.

The FAQ just says take something, leave somthing. Wouldn't that be a good place to add some sort of "trade even or up" statement? But is it really spelled out in a spot that newbies will see? Sure, everyone reading the forums knows what the consensus is on trading behavior, but I bet lots more people read the FAQ than visit the forums. If nothing is stated in the FAQ, newbies may be thinking "prize" instead of "even trade" when they find their first caches.

They don't jump around if you enter the actual coordinates. They only jump around if you rely on the Geocaching.com .kml interface. (as Keystone already mentioned upthread) [ I use GPS Visualizer to make a reliable .kml file from the .loc waypoint files you can download (I'm not a premium member, so I don't know if premimum members need to go through the same routine.) ]