A few questions from a Geocaching newcomer

[Sirrus123]

Hi!

I'm new to this sport and i am LOVING it!

I have a few questions however.

 

1. Can all cellphones use GPS? (i don't have a GPS yet)

 

2. I have an old Palm m100 black and white palm pilot with a 2mb memory, can this be used for anything?

 

3. Are there any other devices that people comonly have. (computers, cell phones, PDAs, smartphones, ect.) that can use GPS?

 

4. How do i start a team?

 

Thanks.

[+briansnat]

1. Not all cell phones have a GPS. Even ones that do are not the best choice for geocaching. You are best off buying a dedicated handheld GPS.

 

2. If you get into geocaching, the Palm can be useful for "paperless" geocaching. It's helpful to bring the cache page along when you are hunting a cache. After a while this becomes a lot of paper. It's helpful being able to carry all your local cache pages on your Palm.

 

3. All of what you mentioned can be adapted for GPS, but again you are best off with a dedicated handheld unit.

 

4. Many families and some groups of close friends who always geocache together create a team account and all

log under that account. It only makes sense to create a team account if you always or almost always geocache together.

[Neos2]

Hi!

I'm new to this sport and i am LOVING it!

I have a few questions however.

 

1. Can all cellphones use GPS? (i don't have a GPS yet)

 

2. I have an old Palm m100 black and white palm pilot with a 2mb memory, can this be used for anything?

 

3. Are there any other devices that people comonly have. (computers, cell phones, PDAs, smartphones, ect.) that can use GPS?

 

4. How do i start a team?

 

Thanks.

1. No, not all cell phones can be used as a GPS. Most don't make great GPS units anyway. A dedicated unit is almost always much more accurate.

 

2. the old Palm is great for using to store multiple cache page information. I use a Palm iiixe and have about 4000 caches on it right now (it's nowhere near full). The m100 will hold fewer than mine, but still will hold many many many. You'll need some program like "Cachemate" (the one I recommend) to get them onto the unit and that works best with a premium membership so you can run PQs.

 

3. Laptops are a favorite with some folks in my crowd because they can read the info better while in their car, or log the caches quickly on trips using free access in hotels or coffee shops. They usually use the laptop in addition to a handheld GPS because it's too cumbersome and risky to take a laptop out across a creek to hunt for a cache in the woods. I do take a laptop along on loooong trips so I can log my caches when we stop for the night.

 

A lot of people try all the gadgets they can find, but most serious geocachers I know get by with just a decent GPS and a PDA of some sort.

 

The biggest issues with trying to have one gadget that will do everything is that the ones that can do that tend to be expensive and fragile, and if a new technology comes out or you dislike one aspect of the setup, you have to replace the whole thing, instead of upgrading the one part that you want to improve.

 

I do have a web browser on my cell phone and I have used it twice while geocaching. Once to check for updates on a cache that we had stale info on in the PDA and once to check the weather report when the skies began to look a bit scarey. I know some people like to get new cache notifications on their cell phones, but I've never been that anxious to be a guinea pig finder for a cache at 3 a.m.

[SuperSlugger6]

Hi!

I'm new to this sport and i am LOVING it!

I have a few questions however.

 

1. Can all cellphones use GPS? (i don't have a GPS yet)

 

2. I have an old Palm m100 black and white palm pilot with a 2mb memory, can this be used for anything?

 

3. Are there any other devices that people comonly have. (computers, cell phones, PDAs, smartphones, ect.) that can use GPS?

 

4. How do i start a team?

 

Thanks.

 

yes cell phones are just likie gps's

 

yes cell phones use gps's

 

i have a computer, to help me look for caches

[+fingers crossed]

I know others have answered, but here's my perspective...

 

1. Can all cellphones use GPS? (i don't have a GPS yet)

No. Some have it built in, some can use bluetooth. There are a million threads on what is good and bad, I personally wouldn't go to a cell phone model for geocaching, I like to stick with a single portable unit since batteries will likely last longer.

2. I have an old Palm m100 black and white palm pilot with a 2mb memory, can this be used for anything?

Cachemate is quite useful. You should be able to get most caches in your area loaded on it.

 

3. Are there any other devices that people comonly have. (computers, cell phones, PDAs, smartphones, ect.) that can use GPS?

Pretty much all of the above. My GPS receiver (Garmin GPSMap60CSX) has routing for travelling as well as offroad mode (for geocaching) A lot of people may use a cheaper GPS and their laptop to route to caches. Others use their intellect to get to caches. There are a lot of choices and flexibility, mostly relating to what people have and how much money they want to spend. I started with a small i3 car GPS, it was terrible in the woods, but I never bought it for geocaching, I bought it for car navigation. Since it hooked me on geocaching I bought a second one!

 

4. How do i start a team?

It's handy if there are caching groups near you. There are forums for countries here at Groundspeak too. We tend to go to events where we meet other cachers.

We also got to learn who was around us by looking at new cache listings. Most of the time the FTF's or early finders are in our area. (Not always, but the trend shows). So we got to learn who was near, and several emails later we can connect to go caching together.

 

Hope some of that helps.

[Neos2]

Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about "starting a team"

 

You don't "have" to be part of a team. You can sign up individually. Each person in your family can have their own caching name--all you do is make a (free or paid) account for each person. It's nice to have at least one premium account in the family so you can get PQs etc.

 

It's fine to have separate accounts and each log every single cache you go to separately. (Of course, some people have just one team account for the family and they still log every cache they do together or separately--and that's OK by me, but once in a great while you'll get someone who will claim you are "cheating" because you logged a cache to the team account in Montana the same day your wife logged a cache in California. Besides, I like my logs to show where I've been and what I've done. I'd feel cheated out of a fun find if Chris did one without me but it showed up on "our" team account--so we each have our own account)

 

Premium accounts cost $30 a year (or $3 a month). Most families find that there are enough services for the whole family with one premium account, especially if they have younger children. Some couples prefer their own premium accounts because they travel to widely different places for work and like to run lots of PQs. Some young adults need their own premium accounts if they go off to college, etc. It varies by family, so choose what works for you. There is no pressure for every family member to have a paid account, there are many ways to contribute to the success of gc besides memberships (buying goods, travelbugs, hosting events, hiding caches, etc).

 

If you were talking about a real "team" account--for instance for you and a buddy who lives somewhere else--well, that can be a hassle, because you only get one email account per account. So you have to share a password, which means you really have to trust the person. If you stop caching together (say one of you moves away) then you have to decide who gets custody of the account. That's a drag!

 

If you just want to informally hang with other cachers and call that a team, you just do that. You can good-naturedly compete against each other if you want, and you can keep track of your adventures together on your profiles if you want.