Who loads the Geomate JR.?

[+johnsingleton1974]

Who is loading the Geomate Jr, before you buy it, and how do they know where you live?

 

On top of that, is Groundspeak getting a portion of the money from the sales of these units since they are basically used for geocaching?

[+johnvanderlip]

It comes preloaded with about 250,000 caches all over the U.S. It's been filtered to only include more family friendly caches, it's described on the website.

With the update cable you can load other databases for example all of Canada (which includes some of the U.S.) all eastern U.S. or all Western U.S.

I live in Canada and load all of Canada. I then put a pocket query for my area onto my Ipod touch (geosphere) I'm new at this but I've yet to have a cache show up in my pocket query that wasn't already in my Geomate.

The Geomate can accept pocket queries now but I haven't bothered because they're all in there plus many thousands more.

[bigreys5]

I am thinking about buying a Geomate Jr, but am kind of wary about the preloaded idea. What about the brand new caches?

[+KI4HLW]

I am thinking about buying a Geomate Jr, but am kind of wary about the preloaded idea. What about the brand new caches?

 

The Geomate preloaded data uses all caches over (I believe) 6 months for a better chance at longevity, the thought being a 6 month or older cache is more likely to be there for a while. A newer cache has a higher chance of being archived for one reason or another (often muggled, CO loses interest, just a bad place). Considering the unit may sit on a store shelf for a while, and that people using the preloaded data probably arn't going to update for a while it is a rather ingenious way to insure the caches they look for will likely still exist.

 

That said I still think the upgrade kit (aka. cable) should have just been sold as part of the unit, I quess they wanted to get the price as low as possible to make it more attractive to buyers.

[+Fich06]

I am thinking about buying a Geomate Jr, but am kind of wary about the preloaded idea. What about the brand new caches?

 

My understanding is you can just plug it in and update at any time. We live in Australia, so loaded Australian caches, and changed the measurement to metric (to save thoroughly confusing my 4 year old son). We've found it to be very accurate and really easy to use (although, at this stage, we've only used it for caches close to home).

[+ActMoritz]

You can load at any time they have it set up were you can do the ALL the us or split it into east and west this I assume this will allow it to load more caches. They do take out all caches over 4 stars. But, You can also load your own Pocket Queries now.