Mayax

One can of compressed air. Blow it out before blowing any real money.

I run a HP hx2795 PDA with a GlobalSat BT-338 receiver. The receiver comes with a belt holster. Turn it on and stick it in the holster or bury it in your pocket (it's that good.) It uses a Sirf III chipset and it's been pretty dadgum accurate. But, once you have a few keywords to look for in a receiver, accuracy becomes pretty standard across the board and then it's the software interpretation making up the rest. Both, the PDA and reciever will need to have bluetooth to communicate. Pretty standard on external receivers, not on PDA's. I wouldn't recommend getting a PDA/receiver combo for battery reasons. My global sat is mostly battery and I've run it over 8 hours without a problem before. I don't even worry about it. A PDA/GPS combo will burn more of the PDA's juice though. And, yes, PDA's are available with replaceable batteries, mine is and involves nothing more than a slide cover like a channel changer. It's not AA batteries but you can get them at Circuit City, Fry's, etc... or whatever your equivalent is. I typically get 8 hours on half screen brightness and 4 on full brightness. The things I would caution on Garmin PDA's though: They're horribly over-priced for what you get on the PDA specs. Also, be careful in that I believe only one model carries a SirF III GPS chip in it. Believe me, you want a SirF III chipset no matter what your decision is GPSr or PDA. Lastly, they're notoriously proprietary. They want their software (which is dadgum good) only interpreting Garmin protocol from, you guessed it, Garmin manufactured receivers. You can get around it now, but their PDA software will soon be requiring it. The things I like about my PDA setup: You can pretty much run whatever software you want to. I can run TomTom, GPS Tuner, Garmin's (if I use their GPS receiver which doesn't have a SirF III chip yet -- dealbreaker, IMHO;) or I can use Magellan's, etc... You can also run whatever the hell people write for GPS functionality on PDA web-sites. There's lots of GPS utilities out there. You play any golf? Folks have written software for laying out distances by hole. In a nutshell, you just have far far more software options available to you if you want to do other stuff. I currently use National Geographic's Topo package and will probably try out Delorme's next. Want to try out Delorme's? Good luck doing that on a Garmin dedicated GPSr or vice-versa. On the biggies in major map software... There are really only two main players: TeleAtlas and Navteq. All the mainline map distributors like Garmin, Magellan, TomTom, etc... all get their base map data from one of the two companies above. Garmin and Magellan use Navteq while TomTom and National Geographic use TeleAtlas. If you live in Europe, you're probably better off using TeleAtlas and if you live in North America you're better off using Navteq based companies. On hardware: Look for SirF III and WAAS enabled in your GPS decision, no matter what. If you're going PDA, get one with an expandable SD slot in it. Dedicated GPSr's are starting to carry more onboard memory than PDA's but a 2 gig SD card for $50 makes that a non-issue. The biggest drawback on PDA's I guess I could say is price by the time you've put it all together. If you were only looking for paperless geocaching, you just buy ten old Palm PDA's for $50 a pop off ebay and basically treat them like throw-aways. Or, go my route and get top-of-the-line kit while paying through the nose putting: PDA, receiver, software, extra memory card, and an impact case all together. If price is no object and you don't mind a little bulk, you might also want to look at a Jasjar.

Yes, there are some GPS units with quite a lot of power. I took issue with the PDA's can't do it comment. PDA's generally do far more than dedicated GPS units. They're typically going to have more oomph than GPS handhelds of the same era and price range as a result. We'll see how it goes down the road a bit as more of this crap still gets merged. Still, even the 3600 is pretty outdated as far as PDA's go. So, that's a pretty unfair comparison. You're comparing a top of the line vs a Que a couple years old. My 2795 is running 624 Mhz, I'm pretty darn sure Garmin doesn't have a unit that approaches that because they really don't need it. They were doing ok with the M5 but they discontinued that and it had more horsepower and memory than any of Garmin's currently available Que PDA's. You really don't need more than 350 Mhz to run a mapping package or at least Garmin and other GPS companies don't seem to think so. I'd be shocked if the c550 had more than 400Mhz in it because, frankly, you just don't need more than that to route quickly, play music, and call someone in real time. Anyway, I have the SD slot for up to 2 Gig as well as well as another CF slot for even more utility. Mine's probably a little more portable. But, this pretty much exemplifies why there's different hardware to begin with. We all have our specific needs and we buy units tailored to those needs. I need to be able to run other mapping software like ARCPad, plot tracks and do area calculations, use Excel, email pictures from the field, pull up electronic manuals, etc... Auto-routing on a map is not my primary concern here or I'd start with a Garmin unit and build from there. Garmin's PDA's are not really a good indication of where PDA tech is at. They're basically dumping their software on PDA's with specs that are 2-3 years old. Even their latest Sirf III equipped PDA is bascially a 3 year old PDA with with a brand new GPS chip improvised into it. PDA's are generally on their way out of the marketplace so their top end stuff is going to be much higher priced and Garmin is not going to be able to sell a PDA/GPS unit with today's specs and stay competitive. Their M4 unit is beyond rediculous in price and the specs are rather laughable. HP is pretty much the only company still making high end PDA's. Everyone else is bowing out. Dell is getting out of them too. There's just not a big marketplace for them anymore as more and more of their abilities get put into smartphone packages. In a couple years, I'll be using a smartphone instead of a PDA. If the JasJar were smaller and able to get an impact case for it, I'd be going that route today. Maybe in a couple years. Auto-routing is more of a fringe benefit in my case.

Ok, this clears things up quite a bit. It appears I'll have to find another mapping solution for my PDA. Unfortunately, the GPS10 does not have a Sirf III chipset and Sirf III is a prerequisite. Buying the whole GPS10 package which would entail $250 for just the Que software and tossing the rest just isn't feasible. I really despise proprietary electronics and software. I guess I'll give TomTom another hard look. Thanks for your help everyone!

This sounds more on the right track. Just so there's no misunderstanding, the Que software is packaged with CN8 or is it only packaged with other Garmin hardware like the GPS10?

This is total misinformation. PDA's typically pack far more RAM and processor power than handheld GPS units. I'd almost be willing to bet the bank Garmin doesn't have a handheld unit that compares to the 2795 in Ram or processor power. The question here is: Is CN8 fully functional across other PDA brands or is it proprietary to Garmin's own branded handhelds/PDA's? Anyone using it on a Dell Axim or Ipaq?

New guy to GPS here, maybe y'all can help. I currently own an hx2795 PDA (PPC) which I use for work. I'm about to pair it up with a bluetooth GPS and some GPS software, also for work... primarily. I'll be working towards geocaching once it's all put together too. The hardware is already decided. The software is not. My first order of business is finding a comprehensive routable map package which will work on the PDA. I've spent the last week researching map software so feel free to chime in and tell me if I'm wrong on this: I was originally looking at TomTom's Navigator package for PDA's, but TomTom uses TeleAtlas for their map data. My information gathering leads me to believe I'd be better served with a Navteq based map product for North America. Is there anyone who can confirm Garmin's City Nav 8 works as well on PDA's as it does on their proprietary GPS units with auto-routing and all? Their web-site is pretty sketchy on this point. Thanks!

With GPS in hand, tell them you're searching for lifeforms on your tricorder.