Which PDA?

[+O.H.D.]

Hi everyone. After months of going on Goecaching adventures with a loose-leaf folder crammed full of print-outs of cachpages, I'm beginning to think that it might be time to invest in a PDA. I know absolutely nothing about PDA's, so what I need to find out is exactly what features I'm going to need (or more specifically, which models best lend themselves to the needs of the average Geocacher). Also, I might mention that price is a consideration since I'm planning (at least for now) to use it only for Geocaching/Benchmarking. Thank you!

 

Brian (1/2 of OHD)

[+Rubberhead]

I do PDAs for a living.

 

Wait until November. Dell has a really sweet offering that, if nothing else, will put price pressures on the other providers.

 

If you insist on a Palm device, the M130 is not bad.

[+Stunod]

I have a m130 that I won in a drawing. I really like it, but have little to compare it to. As far as geocaching , the pocket queries are much better than the paper printouts!

 

"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand."

[+PDOP's]

I recently bought a new Palm M100 for $50 off of Ebay specifically to use with my GPS and geocaching. It only has 2 mb of mem but that's plenty if all you're going to do is store cache pages (not maps). I use this excellent free utility Geoclipping to download cache pages my palm.

 

I also like to save my tracks, routes and waypoints with this freeware GPilotS but this only works with Garmin GPSr's. I've used it to save a weeks worth of tracks and waypoints and it works great.

[+st_richardson]

I'm enjoying my m130.

 

I can beam calendar & phone numbers to and from my cell phone. If I beam an appointment from my phone & then sync my palm with my yahoo calendar, Yahoo will then send my phone a SMS alarm. (It's fun to go in circles.)

 

I'm still trying to figure out a way to sync for my Yahoo email and some other web pages.

[+Dan_Edwards]

If you interested in a color unit of any kind test it before you buy. Years ago I was going to get a Color Visor till I took one outside in the Colorado sun. After a few seconds of squinting trying to read the screen I went back and got a Black & White model. From the reviews I have read though color screens have improved a lot since the Summer of 2000.

 

A = A

[+Faderaven]

Do any of them have USB connections?

[+Gimpy]

The majority of them, I believe, come with what's called a cradle. A stand that connects to your pc via usb & also to a 110v outlet. The pda has a connection at the bottom of the unit. When you set it in the cradle, the batts. are being charged(110v) & you're connected to the pc(usb). I believe some units run off aa batts, so there's no 110v connection. I've got a Sony Clie' T665C & had a Visor Prism, & they both have the usb/110v deal. My Clie' has a 66 MHz Dragonball CPU, & really does a great job with Pocket Querys, jpg. images I've loaded & all sorts of different utilities. The backlit TFT 320 X 320 dot Color display is very good, even in sunlight. I've got 3 different 128 mb. memory sticks that I use to store different types of data etc. They really are handy. Hope this helps.

 

"Gimpy"

[+O.H.D.]

OK everybody, here's where I stand at the present moment... yesterday, a friend offered to (essentailly) give me a used (but perfectly functional) Casio BE-300. How useful might I expect one of these unit's to be vis-a-vis goecaching? Any assistance would be appreciated.

 

Brian (1/2 of OHD)

[+RobAGD]

Well I dont know much about the BE-300's except that are not "normal" palm devices as I understand them. You might want to look into the software thats avaiable for them.

 

I got a m125 Palm for $125 and it serves well, I went for cheap because well I am running around in the woods with it, if something happens to it I am not really going to sweat $125. And the 8mb of memory allows a lot of toys to be present

 

-Robert