paper or paperless?

[arjie90]

I am new to geocaching. I live in the north and can't go touchy feely the equipment. I am looking at either the oregon 200 or 450. Maybe the 60csx. I am presuming the term paperless means the your notes are kept on the gps rather than a notebook, or does the gps have a roll of paper for printing? Yeah dumb question I know. I need to get a Gps for geocaching mt duaghter is in girl guides and they do this for fun. I enjoy it too. What would you recommend? Somehting under $500 would be great. I am a quality type person and also ease of use. I just don't know where to turn as I cannot go into a store and ask or play with the gadget. Please help. lol Costco has an oregon 200 with canadian topo for 289.00 and a 60csx for 219.00

The 450 seems to run around 400 or so. Thank you

[+dfx]

i'd recommend the oregon 450 plus some of the great free topo maps (ibycus). i don't know why the oregon 200s are still so expensive, the 450s are far superior.

 

paperless or not mostly refers to how you access the cache listing, which includes name, cache type, description, difficulty/terrain ratings, cache size and attributes. on a fully paperless unit, all that information is stored on the device itself and you can access and view it right there in the field. without a paperless device, you'd have to print out the listing and take it with you, hence the name. the 60 series isn't really paperless.

Edited October 11, 2010 by dfx

[+randco]

I can tell you that the 60CSx is a great handheld. I also purchased Garmin's City Navigator maps from an online source for about $75 and to make me paperless, I purchased a Dell Axim 5 PDA from Used Handhelds for $35. I purchased Cachemate software for the PDA from smittyware for $8. The screen size on the Dell Axim is 2" x 3" which is very nice for my older eyes.

 

Yes, I carry two pieces of equipment but for me, its not a problem.

[+Minskie]

Whats the problem or big deal with a bit of paper anyway?

 

Actually I find it easier to have a hard copy of things for quick reference.

Edited October 24, 2010 by Minskie

[+Highland Horde]

I started with the etrex venture HC. Then i got the app for my BB so I could do paperless. I found it handy to have all the logs and hints with me but kind of a pain to be working with 2 devices. I tried out the oregon 500 and the GPSMAP 62s. both units are great but more $ than i wanted to spend. The two things i was sure i wanted was a SD slot and paperless. I ended up getting the Dakota 20. Its basically a smaller oregon with a couple of features removed. I have installed all free maps (ibycus topo and openstreetmaps). I am very pleased with the unit. It grabs sats quick and seems more accurate than the etrex. Its a new unit so i know that garmin will have firmware upgrades for a while...(i just installed the latest that gives chirp support). It was right around $300. I like the size of it compared to the oregon. The screen is smaller than the oregon so not as good for in the car but i find it better in the field.

well thats my $0.02

(now i gotta go find 2 people that will give me a penny for my thoughts )

 

EDIT: Oh and the Dakota 20 doesn't support Wherigo, the oregon series does

Edited October 24, 2010 by Highland Horde

[+briansnat]

Whats the problem or big deal with a bit of paper anyway?

 

Actually I find it easier to have a hard copy of things for quick reference.

 

If you're just going out for a cache or two, nothing. But say you're going on vacation and want to do a lot of caching but aren't sure which ones you will go after. Are you going to print out 200 - 300 cache pages?

 

Say you're taking a 2 hour drive somewhere and want to hunt the caches along the way. Are you going to print out every cache along the route?

 

Or maybe you happen to get out of work early and want to do some caching. If, you didn't print anything out you're out of luck.

 

It's very convenient to have all the cache info of every cache you could conceivably hunt right on your unit or PDA. And you don't wast all of that paper. Before I went paperless I had stacks of printed cache pages all over the place. On my desk, on the dining room table, in my car, in my backpack. I've been largely paperless for about 6 years now and I'm still finding cache page printouts laying around.

[+handymantim]

All this paper is a pain but not nearly as bad as looking for a cache that is a multi or 4 star difficulty and not knowing it. I have done both.

I have been loading the caches into my GPS using EasyGPS and not using the clues . Sometimes it works out sometimes not.

 

Today I downloaded GSAK onto my laptop. You can use it with Pocket Quaries and have all the details with you and no need for internet connection. you can store up to 1000 caches at once.Not sure how it will work out but it has to be better than nothing.

[+Manville Possum]

We have a Magellan Triton 400. When it is NOT displaying "internal error" and shuting down, it is nice to go paperless. All of my downloads have been installed using Vantage Point, which helps, but did not solve the problem.

[+Minskie]

Whats the problem or big deal with a bit of paper anyway?

 

Actually I find it easier to have a hard copy of things for quick reference.

 

If you're just going out for a cache or two, nothing. But say you're going on vacation and want to do a lot of caching but aren't sure which ones you will go after. Are you going to print out 200 - 300 cache pages?

 

Say you're taking a 2 hour drive somewhere and want to hunt the caches along the way. Are you going to print out every cache along the route?

 

Or maybe you happen to get out of work early and want to do some caching. If, you didn't print anything out you're out of luck.

 

It's very convenient to have all the cache info of every cache you could conceivably hunt right on your unit or PDA. And you don't wast all of that paper. Before I went paperless I had stacks of printed cache pages all over the place. On my desk, on the dining room table, in my car, in my backpack. I've been largely paperless for about 6 years now and I'm still finding cache page printouts laying around.

 

Well I guess I'll soon find out. I have a Garmin Nuvi & have uploaded all my GeoCache files onto it using Garmin's POI Loader.

[mtbikernate]

I used a non-paperless GPS (76CSx) and an old PDA (Dell Axim) with cachemate to accomplish paperless caching for awhile. It worked well, except that sorting through my list of caches was a little clunky.

 

I recently got an Oregon 450 and really like being able to be paperless on one device. it's annoying at times to have to read between HTML tags (boy, it'd be nice if the Oregon could at least ignore them and not display them) when cache owners make nice cache pages, but it sure beats flopping between devices or carrying a bunch of printouts.

 

if you're patient, you might find a good sale on a satisfactory GPS with the holidays approaching. I snagged my Oregon 450 for $250US when REI had it on sale for a weekend.