Zire Pda

[+Ozbods]

Hi folks, can anyone tell me if the Zire PDA with 2mb of memory will do for a paperless geocache machine.

Will it run everything i want it too, etc.

Cheers.

[+Night Stalker]

Can't tell for sure, but my PDA has 64 meg of Ram and I had to add a 256 meg card to load all the stuff I wanted for caching. My GPX file for caches is 2 meg by itself.

[+geobc]

Hi folks, can anyone tell me if the Zire PDA with 2mb of memory will do for a paperless geocache machine.

Will it run everything i want it too, etc.

Cheers.

Assuming you don't want it to display maps or interface with a GPS, I think it would be a great choice. It just needs to run Cachemate and 2MB is more than enough for that task.

 

 

GeoBC

[+Jhwk]

Don't really think you have enough memory. 8MB is usually the lower limit. You have to load the software, and then all of the waypoints. I have an older M515 that I use for paperless caching. With my cachemate loaded and ~1000 caches, I'm eating about 2.8 MB.

 

Can you add an SD card to your Zire?

[+Wacka]

I had a m100 that had 2M and it held about 550 caches in cachemate.

[+NightPilot]

Night Stalker, if you're using that much memory for caches, you must be running a Microsoft OS. 2MB should be plenty on a Palm, unless you're trying to put every cache in the country on it. You can load 500 caches easily in that amount of memory.

 

The original Zire has no expansion slot, so it's not possible to use a memory card, but it is possible, and relatively cheap, to upgrade it to 8MB. I used to have one of those, but I ended up giving it to my mother after buying an OS5 model. It will work fine for caching, either with or without the upgrade.

[+Ozbods]

Thanks everyone. This is great advice to navigate me through the minefield that represents PDAs.

I was thinking that it might be an idea for the powers that be on this forum to start up a recommendation post. Maybe we could list pdas and detail what they will be capable of doing, and if they're any good.

eg, if anyone wants to look at maps and connect direct to their gpsr, what do they choose.

What OS do you need to run cachemate?

and so on.

I haven't managed to get hold of one yet but i've seen the original Zire for under 10GBP and if it does all i want then why pay more.

[+New England n00b]

Before my Palm III died, I used Cachemate, and had more than enough room (2 MB) to store caches within it. I mean, is it really likely I'm going to hit 500 caches in one day - or even weekend?

 

The -only- problem I had was that the Palm III was a slow old beast. Or I am impatient. Or both.

 

Could I afford it, I'd buy another el-cheapo unit and do it all over again.

 

Keep in mind that whatever you buy, make sure it is like gambling money: If you lose it, it won't hurt you much. And by lose, I mean stepped on, dropped in water, sat upon, left at a cache, etc. I wouldn't be using that super-new-all-amazing $499 palm or pocket PC for caching - not without one heckuva good case.