Going paperless

[+Jake & Hiney]

Hi,

 

We have been geocaching for about a year now and its time to go paperless (costing us an arm and a leg on ink cartridges ), trying to decide whether to purchase a new Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld or to buy an older used Palm, is there a certain model that works better than another?

 

Many Thanks

[+Hynr]

If your budget permits, go for color and SD card.

[+Vegas Gamblers]

We purchased a Z22 on ebay for 56 bucks shipped. If all that you are going to use it for is Geocaching, then I would recomend this unit. We have it loaded with cachemate and everything works fine. It is color and not that difficult to use. If you want to use the PDA for other things then I can't help much.

 

I did find this thread for you here

[+imajeep]

We purchased a Z22 on ebay for 56 bucks shipped. If all that you are going to use it for is Geocaching, then I would recomend this unit. We have it loaded with cachemate and everything works fine. It is color and not that difficult to use. If you want to use the PDA for other things then I can't help much.

 

I did find this thread for you here

 

I second that. We have a Z22 that we use just for geocaching. Only complaint is that the screen isn't readable in bright sunlight. but that's a problem with most PDAs.

[+storm180]

Depends on what your budget is. Both my better half and I both have HP IPAQ 2795's that we use in the field while geocaching. They are a bit more expensive but we also use them for business. Best of both worlds I guess. I use GPX sonar or Cachemate PPC and Backcountry navigator for the software on the ipaq

[+Airmapper]

I have a Palm m125, I was looking at different types, and asking people here on the Forum, and of them all it seemed to fit the best for my use.

 

Grayscale screen, can be read in direct sunlight.

Backlight, not bright but you can see the screen in the dark.

USB Cradle instead of Serial.

Uses normal AAA batteries

Has an SD slot.

Costs about $20- $40

 

With an SD slot, in the event you loose all the data when removing the batteries, which is pretty common in the older Palms, you can back up virtually everything you use onto the SD card, and use that until you get home and can re-sync it.

 

If you have Windows Vista, there may be a few issues with the software, but recently a Beta was released on Palm's website that is Vista compatible.

[+NightPilot]

Get one with an SD expansion slot, of which there are many models. They will all work fine. Color is nice, but difficult to see outside in the sunlight. You won't be able to connect the E2 to your GPS, but you can do it rather easily (provided your GPS uses a serial connection) to any of the older models. Any of the M series should do fine.

[+Scaber]

You really don't need an expensive PALM for paperless. Especially if you will mostly be using it for geocaching. I know a few fellow cachers who have left or broken their PALMs while out in the boonies. A PALM with 8MB memory is about what you need to get started. Having one with an SD card slot is nice to load thousands of cache info. I got a used PALM on ebay for about $20. Once you go paperless, you'll never go back.