Paperless Caching

[+mconnelly]

Thinking of going paperless caching, can any one recommend a cheap PDA that would do the job.THANKS I have a etrex Ledgend C

[+GixxerUT]

if you do a search for "paperless" and one for "pda", you will see lots of helpful info already posted in previous threads

 

paperless is great, you'll love it

[+VENTUREMAN7/ "A" TEAM"]

SENT YOU AN E-MAIL

[+Team yGEOh]

I found a Palm m500 on ebay for $20. It is working great for me.

[+Green Achers]

Thinking of going paperless caching, can any one recommend a cheap PDA that would do the job.

Thinking about it? You either have too much free time or too much money or both. Otherwise, going paperless will save you money and time! Consider the paper and ink alone will justify a new PDA (plus CacheMate program). Any PDA that runs Palm OS (includes Handspring) will do and you can find them for under $70. One of many sources. You'll quickly find out that 'searching for a cache' is the hunt rather than the research.

 

Stop thinking! Just do it.

[+ebengreene]

I found this link on CompUSA for a refurb 8mb color Visor for $50. With 1 year warranty.

 

Just thought you might find this interesting:

 

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_in...8176&pfp=BROWSE

 

I also noticed they are selling new T3s; I didn't know anyone was still doing that.

[+Renegade Knight]

Cheap, is used palm and Cachemate. But you probably have that idea by now.

[+mconnelly]

Just wanted to thank every one for the suggestions, great help THANKS

[+NightPilot]

The T3 is still in production by PalmOne, and still being sold on the PalmOne site. It is far from obsolete, and IMO is still the best buy, and the most truly useful model offered. The T5 has some problems, and isn't really a good replacement for the T3.

[HIPS-meister]

There are, obviously, two general types of PDAs out there .. Palm and Windows.

 

* Which type do you prefer, and why?

 

* What is the actual practical capacity of your unit, in terms of number of caches stored and so forth?

[+Mr Lost]

I use a Zire 21.

I use GSAK for all geocache data management and converting the files to HTML,

I use Sunrise Identity for transferring them to my Zire

I use Plucker to read them on the Zire.

 

The Zire 21 has 8 megs of memory.

 

The number of 'caches you can store would be around 4k for 500 geocaches at first, BUT as time goes on, and you add more and more logs to the history of each geocache, that memory will begin to expand. I keep about 300 geocaches in mine, and at first they only occupied about 1.8 megs of memory, but after 6 months of weekly updates through PQs for the same geocaches to keep the logs current, it has grown to around 2.4 megs.

 

If money is an issue, the Zire 21 is just fine.

If you don't mind spending a little more, get a PDA with expandable memory. In the long run, it will pay off.

Edited March 10, 2005 by Mr Lost

[+NightPilot]

In general, Palms have better battery life and are easier to operate. I don't know the exact capacity in numbers of caches, because it depends on the program you're using to read them, and on how you use it. I doubt you'll ever reach a limit unless you try to put all the caches in the US on it. I have about 500 caches, in both Plucker and Cachemate, and I'm nowhere close to running out of room, and caching is only a small part of what I use my Palm for. You can store the cache databases on an SD card, thus using essentially no storage memory at all.

Edited March 10, 2005 by NightPilot

[+Mudinyeri]

In general, Palms have better battery life and are easier to operate.

 

Oh, no, here we go with the Palm vs. PPC thing again! Can I just say, I've used both and both work fine. It comes down to personal preference.

 

P.S. I never ran my battery dead on any of my PPC's. My first Palm used AAA batteries which always seemed to run out at the most inopportune time but my Palm V never left me without power.

[+NightPilot]

I'm not trying to start a flame war, but it's a fact that older Palms have better battery life. Monochrome and/or low resolution screens and slower processors use less battery power. Old Palms can go weeks on a set of AAA batteries. That doesn't make them better for all uses, of course, but it does help for caching. In general, PPCs are a little larger and heavier, but this doesn't mean they can't be used. It depends mostly on individual preferences. If I were starting out and didn't have a PDA, and intended to use one only for paperless caching, I would go with an older model Palm, because you can get one for about a tenth of what you would pay for a PPC or new Palm, often less. If you lose it, break it, or decide it just isn't enough horsepower, your pocketbook won't be completely flat.