Opinions on the Magellan companion for the Palm V?

[+Nos402]

I just got agreat deal on ebay for a Palm Vx plus a bunch of accessories including the Magellan companion GPS for it. does anyone have experience or opinions on this unit? Thanks!

[+parkrrrr]

I'm happy with mine. Here are the downsides you'll usually hear about when you ask:

 

- It's not shockproof or waterproof.

- It only uses AAA batteries, so it won't last as long as an eTrex might on one set of batteries.

- You can't charge the Palm while it's attached to the GPS, and using the serial port (to talk to the GPS) makes the Palm's batteries run down more quickly.

- Software support is a little weak at the moment. There's no current software that will project a waypoint if you give it a bearing and distance, there's no current software that supports different datum or coordinate systems, and there's no one piece of software that gives you everything you need.

 

Okay, so with all that out of the way. I am quite happy with mine. It's served well for a dozen finds and a few not-founds so far. Here's what I've found to be useful software:

 

- The Nav Companion software that came with it (but I downloaded the upgrade from Magellan's website; you might want to do the same.)

 

- GPSPilot Tracker. With a little work, you can use aerial photos or topo maps as base maps with this one. Waypoint support is a little weird, and it takes some getting used to, but it's nice to have just to be able to view the aerials in the field without having to waste a bunch of ink printing them.

 

- Cetus GPS. I like Nav Companion's navigation screen better, but Cetus does a great job capturing waypoints, especially if you're placing a cache. It also has great route logging and some other good functionality. As soon as he adds a waypoint database, I may never go back to Nav Companion.

 

- Planetarium. Not strictly useful for geocaching, but it does have a nice display that can pass for a compass in a pinch (like the one on some eTrexes, from what I've heard) and it will also compute the magnetic deviation for wherever you are. The add-on GPS module will get location and time information from your GPS to give you realtime star charts and such.

 

Other stuff other people use but I haven't gotten around to yet: There's Plucker or Avantgo for saving cache description pages. There's also a decoder program somewhere for decrypting hint text. Jeremy has said he's adding lots of new Palm-compatible functionality to the site soon, so watch for it.

 

And finally, try SoftGPS. Everyone must try SoftGPS, if only to experience the thrill of submillimeter accuracy.

[+Byron & Anne]

I've got a Magellan GPS Companion that I use with my Handspring Visor Pro. All Fuzzy says goes along with my experiences. I've also added Fugawi to be able to use top maps. The gps works quite well. I've not had any problems maintaining a is no perfect software. I think as this combination becomes more popular there will be more stuff avaliable. We do a lot of backpacking and I carry the visor to have reading material without the need to carry heavy paper. It only made sense to add the small gps module to make it lightweight and multi-use.

 

And by all means do get Softgps. One of the best little software packages for Palm OS.

 

[+parkrrrr]

Note that some of my comments don't apply to the GPS Companion for Visor. In particular, I believe you can still charge a Visor while the GPS Companion is plugged in. Another advantage is that, since the Visor unit is a Springboard module, the included software doesn't take up any memory in the Palm.

 

There's a pretty balanced technical review at http://celia.mehaffey.com/dale/gpscomp.htm