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Which Pda To Use Along With A Gps??


mo-cache

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ok, I just bought myself the garmin etrax lengend gps. It has what I believe to have the most of everything I would ever use with a gps. But, I am now realizing that 8 mb may not......shoot...it isn't enough to down load all the north american maps (map source) wass. I do a bit or traveling and some fishing too, so I was hoping that I could have all the info with me when I do travel. LOL now that I am into geocaching, thats a bit more info I wouldn't mind having near by. So I was thinking in getting a pda. Something I could keep in the car or napsack while I was out about caching/fishing. A friend of mine introduced me into geocaching and it would be nice at times to have the descriptiong page with you when you are out looking for the cache. One way is to print it out and bring a hard copy or the other way is a compter/laptop, or my idea a pda. I was wondering which pda? The north america (map source) wass is about 500mb so I would need a pda that had expansion slots for memory cards. This would help me keep all the extra info on my pda and still have my gps for the rest. Am I nuts?? or is this something others are doing as well?? I was thinking about purchasing the "Palm Zire 31 Colour Handheld PDA MP3 Player" Anyone have any ideas?? Either with a different pda or a different method?? Love to hear all ideas!

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The areas I frequent fit into the legend. It works ok. Sure, more memory would be "nice", but not necessary (for me). Your experience may vary.

 

I have a Palm M515 that I bought new a few years ago. It is a workhorse. I use it daily for scheduling/addresses/games/etc.

 

Before the M515, I had an original V. It was outstanding also. It died after a freak accident involving a toilet. They are NOT waterproof.

 

Both models can be found very reasonably on eBay. I would recommend the Vx for geocaching over the V (more memory).

 

Someday, I will have another (newer) Palm. I work with guys who have the Zire 31 and the Zire 71. Both are outstanding units. Two guys in my department have Tungsten E and Tungsten E2 models. These are outstanding, but a bit of overkill for geocaching.

 

If I needed another Palm today, I would buy a good working model on eBay.

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I'm using a Handspring Visor Deluxe, it's got 8 meg of memory and was bought off ebay with 2 cradles and leather case for 25.00 B) ebay is your friend.... I've since purchased gsak and cachemate, 2 great apps you may want to check out. I love my set up. Next stop laptop to do realtime tracking with.

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I have a Legend and a Zire 31

 

With the legend 8 meg of memory I can get more that half of the state of Oklahoma using MetroGuides.

 

I got a used Zire M150 (2meg Monochrome USB) from E-Bay for 20-25

it works better than the color in bright sunlight. (It hold over 500 caches)

 

Also get CacheMate ($8) for the Palm.

 

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK $20) is the best program for managing Pocket Queries (GPS Files) on you home computer

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Similar to Uncle T K - I use GSAK to slice and dice the files and Cachemate on my Palm M515 to tote the cache pages around. I regularly get my pocket queries (490 per town) of my local area plus two other towns I frequently travel to. I update the pages in GSAK every week and then have it output the palm file for me. This way I don't have to carry paper copies of the logs or web pages out into the bush. Cachemate does a great job of displaying the page + hints and also allows you to log your find, what you took and left, TB's, thoughts, etc. There is also a way to sync cachemate back to GSAK and also log your visits back on GC.com, but I haven't gotten that far yet. B)

BTW, the 1200 caches I have on the palm only take up ~1.5MB. Not sure why you need 500MB.

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I use a PPC that contains about 5-6 NE states of detailed roads maps, with autonavigation (Mapopolis) with over 3,000 caches avoiding the need for printing the web cache pages. I could load a lot more maps - the amount is limited only by the SD card; I use a 256M but you can increase that or have different units with different areas of maps loaded. I reserve my Vista GPS for Mapsource Topo maps mainly.

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I have a Garmin Legend and a Palm Tungsten E2. I use GSAK and Cachemate and have been very pleased. The only thing I'm missing is the maps... but a quick import from GSAK to Streets & Trips gives me pushpins on my map and printable driving directions from cache to cache. Wish I could transfer those to my Palm... but Bill Gates wants me to buy a Pocket PC and run WindowsCE. No thanks, I already have a laptop infested by the windows virus... I don't want to do that to my PDA as well.

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I use a Palm M500 that I already had, but you can get one for about $40.00 . . . which is just about the right price considering the abuse it might take when you are out Geocaching.

 

Cachemate costs just $8.00 and GSAK costs $20.00. A hard case, for whichever PDA you use is also essential.

 

If you spring for a more expensive PDA, you might want to invest in an Otter Box. :blink:

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I have one of the original Compaq IPAC 3670 PDAs (65 Mbytes RAM). Had it before my brother introduced me to Geocaching. Had also picked up a Transplant GPSr CF Card that plugs into the PDA (dual slot expansion pack with extra battery).

 

This worked great with GPxSonar and GPSTuner -- until I purchased Mapopolis! Then I had to add the 1 Gbyte CF memory card and it still won't get the entire US even when zipped (and who wants to wait while the PPC unzips a file).

 

GPxSonar will give me the web pages based on the GPX Pocket Queries. GPSTuner will let me do the close in work while Mapopolis will get me within walking distance.

 

But, since you already have the GPS, you might be able to run two memory cards in a Pocket PC <<grin>>.

 

Bring a zip bag (gallon size) along for when it rains. I was caught out once without it and thought I'd lost the unit when it started acting strange and then shut down.

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I have been using a Visor Deluxe forever and it has always worked great for caching..

 

Although I have recently upgraded to a LifeDrive.. I sometimes travel for work and the benefit of having my MP3's and the ability to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on while flying is great!! I DEFINITLEY picked up the extended warranty since it has been caching with me 4 times now!!

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We have been using an HP 3955 Pocket PC for the past few months and have had great success with it. We use Microsofts Streets and Trips for the PPC and are able to store about a hundred different maps covering a very large area that we frequently visit. All the caches are loaded into it through GSAK as pushpins which make it easy to see what is around us. For the actually cache pages we use the HTML export feature of GSAK. I found that by keeping the files less than about 200 caches the PPC works great. So I have several folders on a 256MB card for the pocket PC which each folder covering a geographic area. The HTML export is great, as it provides many different ways to search for caches such as nearest, by name, by hider and a cache density feature.

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The north america (map source) wass is about 500mb so I would need a pda that had expansion slots for memory cards. This would help me keep all the extra info on my pda and still have my gps for the rest. Am I nuts?? or is this something others are doing as well??

You can't upload Mapsource data from your PDA's card to your Garmin GPS. There is currently no program that will reliably serve this purpose. Among other problems, few if any PDAs can act as USB masters. Serial would work but a) I don't think your particular GPS supports it, :lol: many current PDAs no longer support it, and c) it would be painfully slow to upload MBs of data through a serial cable. After that comes the PDA mapsource transfer software problem (none exist).

 

Your only option when travelling is to either use SendMap and use a computer at an Internet cafe or somewhere; or bring along a laptop computer.

 

Either that or buy a different mapping solution that does work on PDAs.

 

GeoBC

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how about the garmin iQue - combining the PDA and the GPSr in one unit - anyone have any input on this fine-looking bit of geek hardware?

 

The claim is that everything is integrated

The iQue is very expensive, and much more fragile than a handheld GPSr.

 

I have dropped my Palm M500, and only the hard case kept it from receiving damage. Yesterday it was threatening rain for a while and I wasn't worried about my GPSr, but I was concerned about the Palm.

 

I have a friend who dropped her GPSMap 60CS onto some rocks as we were scrambling to find a cache. It bounced a couple of times and landed about 15 feet away.

 

It just needed to be turned back on. I don't think an iQue would survive the kind of abuse it might get while Geocaching.

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