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Paperless Caching......a helping hand please


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Hi Paul,

 

Paperless is great. How much do you want to spend? You can use anything from a Palm M500 to a Handspring Tungsten to latest and greatest Palm. That could cost you anywhere from free for a hand-me-down, to $20 to $3-400. There are also other platforms like the PPC and others.

 

I'm using a Palm Tungsten E2, with Bluetooth, which works great. I use it for a lot of work related tasks too, so that's part of my choice. Given my druthers I would have a Tungsten TX with wireless. :laughing: You could easily use something like a Palm M500 for paperless; you just wouldn't be able to store the thousands of caches that I keep on my SD Card. You CAN get by without thousands of caches. :antenna:

 

First, you will want to become a Premium Member ($30) so you can download PQ's (Pocket Queries). For software that I'm familiar with, I can suggest GSAK (about $27) for your PC and CacheMate (about $12) for the Palm.

 

There's a start for you.

 

Cache On!

 

JohnTee

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First, you will want to become a Premium Member ($30) so you can download PQ's (Pocket Queries). For software that I'm familiar with, I can suggest GSAK (about $27) for your PC and CacheMate (about $12) for the Palm.

 

I highly recommend this combination as well. Once I tried this paperless system, there really was no going back. Any old Palm device will do. (Mine is a Handspring Visor Prism that has to be at least 6 or 7 years old by now!)

 

That said, look for something reasonably rugged since it will need to go everywhere with you. I also grabbed myself a Visor stylus that had a ballpoint pen built in (along with a few replacement ink cartridges) for signing the cache logs. That way, all I need is my eTrex Vista HCx and my Visor and I have everything I need for some serious geocaching!

 

Good Luck! Let us know if you need more tips!

 

Mojoski!

Edited by Mojoski
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My caching partner has a Garmin eTrex for the GPS side but can anyone also recommend a PDA with GPS??

Okay, I'll admit to not staying up to date on geocaching devices. Are there PDAs that also have GPS capability?

 

Patty

 

(hoping--but not with much confidence--that Steve Jobs will have good news on that subject tomorrow morning :ph34r: )

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My caching partner has a Garmin eTrex for the GPS side but can anyone also recommend a PDA with GPS??

Okay, I'll admit to not staying up to date on geocaching devices. Are there PDAs that also have GPS capability?

 

Patty

 

(hoping--but not with much confidence--that Steve Jobs will have good news on that subject tomorrow morning :ph34r: )

The Garmin iQue has GPS in a PDA. You can also purchase cards to put in other PDAs. The big disadvantage to this is the fragility of the PDA, its lack of weatherproof-ness, and its limited battery life compared to a hand-held GPS unit.

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I'm very new to geocaching, and am not fully aware of what's out there, but here's what I use:

 

Geocaching.com with Premium Membership

GSAK on my computer

GPXSonar and TomTom Navigator on my HTC TyTn II

 

The tytn2 is a windows mobile PDA (it's actually my work phone). It has a fair sized screen, slideout/tilt keypad, touch screen with stylus, and a very good GPS receiver all built in (it knocks the socks off of my Garmin). Also comes with wireless and bluetooth as standard (well, mine does anyway).

 

Before getting my premium account, GSAK and GPXSonar, I would waste 30 odd sheets of paper on a caching day. Now I just take a small notebook (or scrap of paper) for multicaches/puzzle caches that need me to take notes while I'm out. I could just type them in the phone, but it's not so good if the weather's bad.

 

The only drawback with the device is that it wouldn't survive a dunk in a river ;) - seems to handle light rain OK though

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