The Cached Potatoes

I'm finding more and more when I look for caches out in rural areas, folks have placed strings of hundreds of "power trail" caches. It's getting to the point where literally over 90 percent of the caches in some areas are power trails. For examples, look at the Geocaching maps for the areas surrounding Mountain Home, Idaho and Weiser, Idaho. Power trails are fine for some folks, but my family is not interested in them. I'd like to filter out power caches, both on the Geocaching.com map and from pocket queries. Geocaching.com could make that possible either by requiring all power caches to be tagged as multi-caches (an easy fix), or better yet creating a new cache type called "power trail cache". Then, it would be a simple matter to filter out power caches. Does anybody else agree?

It's still a problem with FireFox 3.6.

I'd like to see added (in order of importance to me): 3-Axis Compass Voice Navigation Prompts (Yes, I know about the challenge of making a waterproof speaker, but Garmin could put a speaker behind a rubber cover that you can peel back while in dry conditions.) Increase Internal Memory for more waypoints, routes, etc. Ability to upload Google/Yahoo/etc. satellite map photos to the unit. Options to accept and blend together satellite signals from the European Galileo and Russian GLONASS systems. I hope I'm not being too ignorant with my suggestions.

Do we know if it has a 2- or 3-axis compass? Earlier rumors were 2-axis. I sure hope it's not 2-axis, or it's a no-sale for me.

Right here in this forum. Click here to see the Garmin Colorado thread (first of many, no doubt).

Unless you want your unit before Christmas, I'd hold off making a purchase decision until the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that's held in mid-January in Las Vegas. That's when any about-to-be-released GPS units will be announced by the various manufacturers. For example, Garmin is about to release its new Colorado line of GPS units. They're almost certain to be shown off with lots of details at CES. I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion on this forum about the new units that are on display at the CES. Good luck.

You mean 3-axis, right? My Garmin 60cs has a 2-axis compass, and it's horrible to work with. You must hold the unit perfectly parallel with the ground for it to work. Even then, it doesn't seem very accurate. As I understand it, a 3-axis compass allows you to hold the GPS unit any way you want.

Shouldn't that be a 3-axis compass? Or do we have to wait until the 2009 upgraded model for a good compass? I do like the "detailed geocache information" feature. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's truly detailed enough.

There's a new gps/satellite-based emergency reporting device available. Here's the web site: Spot Satellite Messenger Home Page It's a lot cheaper than other satellite beaconing devices. It's $150 for the device, plus $100 per year for service. It's really unique because in addition to allowing you to report life-threatening emergencies from anywhere, it also allows you to send "I'm okay" messages and track your progress on Google maps for friends and family to see. I'm thinking of getting one for when I go geocaching in the backcountry beyond cell phone coverage. So far, the reviews seem pretty good. Has anybody tried one of these things?

If it's the outfit I'm thinking of, I believe they tend to have unusually high shipping costs. Before ordering from them be sure to understand your grand total cost.

I feel your pain. I have a 60cs and am disappointed in its compass, too. It's silly to pay this kind of money and have a compass that's in a constant state of PMS. For the future, any new gps unit that I buy must have a 3-axis compass. I'm glad to see that Garmin appears to be moving in that direction.

It seems to me that the manufacturers add features incrementally to their units to be safe (sales-wise). You don't see a lot of bold, new designs. As such, geocaching features creep slowly, cautiously into new units. If one of the big manufacturers were to design a GPS unit from scratch with lots of innovative geocaching features specifically for that market, I'm sure a large percentage of geocachers would buy it. Whether that's a big enough market to warrant the expense, I don't know. So far, I guess not.

For obvious financial reasons, if Garmin plans to come out with a successor to the 60Csx soon, it's very unlikely that we'll hear anything about it until after Christmas. There's a big consumer electronics show in early January (8th - 11th) where Garmin traditionally announces new products. Keep your eye on that event if you want to know what's coming out before next summer in the world of GPSs.

I have a Sony VAIO too. Try this to turn off that feature: 1. From your START menu, select CONTROL PANEL. The Control Panel appears. 2. Double-click the MOUSE icon. A dialog box appears. 3. Click the POINTER OPTIONS tab. 4. Uncheck the box in the SNAP TO panel. 5. Click the OK button to close the dialog box. 6. Try it now (you may have to reboot). -Chris

RMA = Return Merchandise Authorization or Return Materials Authorization

It would be VERY nice if the new "S" model had one of those improved compasses, in addition to everything else. What do they call them, 3-axis something-or-another compasses?

Be careful if you don't put a ground plane piece of metal under your antenna when it's on top of your head. If you have a normal-to-high IQ, your random thoughts will get recorded as waypoints as you walk along. For example, if you walk past a donut shop, you'll probably find a waypoint recorded at that location named "ooooh donuts!" If you don't find any such waypoints recorded, well...that's okay. We all can't be rocket scientists. You're still a special person.

The eMap is a great unit for geocaching. I used one for many years until I upgraded to a 60cs.

That's awesome, Clyde. How about something similar for Google Maps? Can you create a macro to load a Google Maps page with push pins for all of the filtered waypoints? Thanks for your hard work!

You should check out all2easy.net It's $4.95 per month (month-to-month). I haven't used it myself, but probably will this summer.

That Lowrance iWay 100m looks interesting. The upcoming 200c might be some nice competition for the Garmin 60c series, as the 100m offers memory cards up to 512mb, bundled software and accessories, and a slightly larger screen (240 x 180 pixels vs. the Garmin's 240 x 160). However, there's not much information available about either model yet. I tried downloading the 100m owner's manual from Lowrance, but my Adobe Reader kept crashing. Does anybody know if the 100m has any geocaching features? The description says it comes bundled with "Mapcreate Turn-By-Turn" software with over 2 million POI. What regions does it cover, and what kind of street detail? What would be the Garmin equivalent? Lowrance also sells a "MAPCREATE™ USA 6.3 SOFTWARE" with over 2 million POI. What's the difference between the two? There's also a MAPCREATE™ USA Topo 6.3 SOFTWARE. Has that replaced the MAPCREATE™ USA 6.3 SOFTWARE? I ask because the MAPCREATE™ USA 6.3 SOFTWARE is not shown on the main software page...you have dig around to find it.

PCWorld's blog posted some info on new Garmin products being shown at the CES show in Las Vegas. Click here to read it. Unfortunately, they don't talk about any new handheld mapping products like the 60 or 76 series.

If Garmin has any new products to announce, they'll probably do it at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show?) in early January 2005. I think that's where the 60c and 60cs were introduced in January 2004. Of course, in the meantime if anybody has heard any rumors about new Garmin units, we'd all love to hear them.

It may be a false-positive, too.

I just ran a copy of Webroot Spy Sweeper (a well-regarded program to remove spyware from your computer). It says it found a copy of "Hacker Wacker" spyware in my c:\program files\gsak directory. It shows it as c:\program files\gsak\irunin.lng According to Spy Sweeper, "HackerWacker is a monitoring utility that records all of your computer activity and then saves the captured information into an encrypted log file for later retrieval." Anybody else, or is it just me?