Palm Zire 31

[+casey97]

Bragging session.

 

My Wife has a sales conference in Orlando for next month. I will be tagging along and be able to cache my heart out most mornings while she slaves at the conference. I convinced my wife I NEEDED to go paperless to keep up with all the caches in the area. So I won an auction for a Palm Zire 31 for $31.27. Amazon has it for $168.62. I just ordered a 2 gig card for it.

 

I was so excited to snipe it for that price, I failed to check if it was appropriate for going paperless. Can one of you more savvy cachers let me know if it will work for its intended purpose?

 

Also, if it will function as intended, what is my next step?

[+Prime Suspect]

Bragging session.

 

My Wife has a sales conference in Orlando for next month. I will be tagging along and be able to cache my heart out most mornings while she slaves at the conference. I convinced my wife I NEEDED to go paperless to keep up with all the caches in the area. So I won an auction for a Palm Zire 31 for $31.27. Amazon has it for $168.62. I just ordered a 2 gig card for it.

 

I was so excited to snipe it for that price, I failed to check if it was appropriate for going paperless. Can one of you more savvy cachers let me know if it will work for its intended purpose?

 

Also, if it will function as intended, what is my next step?

It will work, though you may not be happy with how the non-TFT lo-res screen performs in bright sunlight. Be sure to upgrade to the latest OS for that model. I don't recall what version it was up to when the Z31 was discontinued. Also upgrade to the latest Palm Desktop version that's compatible with the Z31.

 

I'd try out both the Spinner/Plucker and the Cachemate solutions for storing and displaying off-line cache data and see which you prefer. Personally, I like seeing the info displayed in Cache Page format, and so go with the former. But a lot of people also like Cachemate. You can try them both out for free.

Edited June 16, 2008 by Prime Suspect

[+jedihunter]

Bragging session.

 

My Wife has a sales conference in Orlando for next month. I will be tagging along and be able to cache my heart out most mornings while she slaves at the conference. I convinced my wife I NEEDED to go paperless to keep up with all the caches in the area. So I won an auction for a Palm Zire 31 for $31.27. Amazon has it for $168.62. I just ordered a 2 gig card for it.

 

I was so excited to snipe it for that price, I failed to check if it was appropriate for going paperless. Can one of you more savvy cachers let me know if it will work for its intended purpose?

 

Also, if it will function as intended, what is my next step?

It will work, though you may not be happy with how the non-TFT lo-res screen performs in bright sunlight. Be sure to upgrade to the latest OS for that model. I don't recall what version it was up to when the Z31 was discontinued. Also upgrade to the latest Palm Desktop version that's compatible with the Z31.

 

I'd try out both the Spinner/Plucker and the Cachemate solutions for storing and displaying off-line cache data and see which you prefer. Personally, I like seeing the info displayed in Cache Page format, and so go with the former. But a lot of people also like Cachemate. You can try them both out for free.

 

I've got a Zire 31 and it works great. I upgraded from my M105 to the Zire and have not had any problems. Currently I am using Plucker/Spinner as the choice for viewing PQs on the PDA. Easy, free, and great visually.

[+casey97]

Can the Plucker/Spinner option be used to search for caches by name? How does Plucker/Spinner organize the cache pages? Are the hints decoded in Plucker/Spinner?

[+Prime Suspect]

Can the Plucker/Spinner option be used to search for caches by name? How does Plucker/Spinner organize the cache pages? Are the hints decoded in Plucker/Spinner?

They are sorted and indexed by:

• Index by ID
  
• Index by Name
  
• Index by Waypoint (abbreviated version of the name, used as a waypoint id)
  
• New within Last Week
  
• Caches with Travel Bugs
  
• Unfound Caches
  
• Corrected Coordinates
  
• Index by Cache Type
  
• Index by Hider
  
• Index of My Caches
  
• Index of Travel Bugs
  
• Index of Encrypted Logs
  
• Index of Hints
  

Cache listings with hints have link to the unencrypted hint page.

 

Personally, I only care about the Index by ID, so I've set that up as primary document page, which save a few clicks. To find a particular cache, I go to the main index page, press Alt-F to start the Find function, and enter in the GCxxxxx code (usually omitting the GC). That takes me to the link for the cache page. Click that, and i see the entire cache page + the last 5 logs. It looks pretty much just like what you see on line.

 

BTW, while I use Plucker as my Palm viewer, I don't use the Plucker Distiller on my PC. Instead, I use Sunrise XP, which doesn't have some of the problems that Plucker does.