initial thoughts - Delorme PN30 - MAC - Palm Pre

[+JZKA]

so i am sure people are coming here and will always be asking "what do i get" - "what works for....." etc... so i will share my experiences.

 

i purchased - i mean - santa got the kids a delorme pn30 for christmas. good deal on amazon.com and i liked the features it had for the price point of under $200 shipped. my friend has a garmin unit (one of the higher end ones) and i couldn't see spending that much for something that could just sit around. being a traveling consultant - my caching time can be few and far between because of projects that require a lot of my time - but i digress.

 

the GPSr is a great unit and very easy to use. i like the fact that after a couple minutes of training - my 10yr old can operate it - including putting in field notes, finding the next closest cache and even looking up the hints. i have used it in the woods - in urban areas (both FL, NJ and NYC) and it has been as accurate as expected. battery life is great - 2AA batteries last at least a whole day - or at least as much as my son and i can go out for a few hours. rechargeables from wally world mean that for about $10 i get a backup set to bring along

 

Now i also have an iMac as the home computer and found out safari and geocaching don't work together well - or at least i couldn't get them to work together. downloaded firefox and it works perfectly to download to the GPSr.

 

i also have the palm pre as my phone. sitting in the airport the other day i found the geocaching software for the phone and immediately downloaded it along with a mapping tool. i haven't had the chance to use it, but i saw that the phone could be used to get the cache hints... yes - right now im too cheap to spend the money for the premium membership. with myself getting out of the hospital (30k) and the wife having surgery earlier this year (12k so far) - my disposable income has dropped as you could imagine - so its nice to see the hints downloaded to the phone.

 

now the only downside i have seen is that some of the cool maps you can download for free for a garmin - may not be available for the delorme (though i havent looked into it enough to see if i am wrong).

 

well i hope this helps someone as i sit at home - beautiful weather out - and waiting for a database to refresh so i can get back to work

[+owlsent]

Just wanted to throw in that I also received a PN-30 and have a Power Mac. One of the reasons for my choice was Delorme seemed to support mac more than other GPSr manufacturers. Delorme also has great customer service. I've had an easy time figuring out what I need to with the GPSr. Only complaint is that cache register isn't uploading my finds when I sync, but it's very easy to upload without it.

 

so i am sure people are coming here and will always be asking "what do i get" - "what works for....." etc... so i will share my experiences.

 

i purchased - i mean - santa got the kids a delorme pn30 for christmas. good deal on amazon.com and i liked the features it had for the price point of under $200 shipped. my friend has a garmin unit (one of the higher end ones) and i couldn't see spending that much for something that could just sit around. being a traveling consultant - my caching time can be few and far between because of projects that require a lot of my time - but i digress.

 

the GPSr is a great unit and very easy to use. i like the fact that after a couple minutes of training - my 10yr old can operate it - including putting in field notes, finding the next closest cache and even looking up the hints. i have used it in the woods - in urban areas (both FL, NJ and NYC) and it has been as accurate as expected. battery life is great - 2AA batteries last at least a whole day - or at least as much as my son and i can go out for a few hours. rechargeables from wally world mean that for about $10 i get a backup set to bring along

 

Now i also have an iMac as the home computer and found out safari and geocaching don't work together well - or at least i couldn't get them to work together. downloaded firefox and it works perfectly to download to the GPSr.

 

i also have the palm pre as my phone. sitting in the airport the other day i found the geocaching software for the phone and immediately downloaded it along with a mapping tool. i haven't had the chance to use it, but i saw that the phone could be used to get the cache hints... yes - right now im too cheap to spend the money for the premium membership. with myself getting out of the hospital (30k) and the wife having surgery earlier this year (12k so far) - my disposable income has dropped as you could imagine - so its nice to see the hints downloaded to the phone.

 

now the only downside i have seen is that some of the cool maps you can download for free for a garmin - may not be available for the delorme (though i havent looked into it enough to see if i am wrong).

 

well i hope this helps someone as i sit at home - beautiful weather out - and waiting for a database to refresh so i can get back to work

[+DazeDnFamily]

Actually, any maps you put on the thing pretty much have to come from DeLorme, or be created with DeLorme's NOT FREE software. That is reason #1 my next GPSr will not be a DeLorme. We've been using ours going on 2 months, and other than that, it's been everything I thought it would be. 107 finds using it so far, and it gets us close every time.

 

Later!

Edited March 12, 2010 by DazDnFamily