GPS for hiking recommendation

I have a Magellan 315 that I have been using for the past 7 years. The
display is going bad and it is time to replace it. My primary use is
hiking and geocaching. I have also used it with a laptop for car
navigation.

I am looking for recommendation on a replacement. Is it a good idea
to stick with a simple model and use it the way I do with the Magellan
or should I buy a model with built in maps that can be used for both
hiking and car navigation?

For hiking what features do people find useful? What models should I
be comparing? For geocaching I would be nice to have all the text for
clues given. Is this practical? Ditto for a car navigation unit?

Thanks

Ray

Garmin etrex Vista is meets most of those needs.

Ray wrote:


I have a Garmin 60CSx and I like it very well, it has all the latest
geocaching features. It doesn't come with any useful maps, so you'll
have to buy them unfortunately. I found that out the hard way. It
finds the satellites extremely well.

Ray wrote:
"For geocaching I would be nice to have all the text for clues given.
Is this practical?"

Hi Ray,
I looked into goecaching applications recently. Difficulty rating and
hints are not included in the standard downloadable file formats
(LOC, GPS, and KML) available at geocaching.com. It is my
understanding that there are only two ways to download-direct-to-GPS
all the content available at geocaching.com for a particular cache:

1) If your GPS is also PDA-type device and if you are a premium
member, you download a copy of geocaching .com web page in an eBook
format,

2) Or if you have a supported mobile phone you can use Trimble
Geocache Navigator program (http://www.geocaching.com/mobile/ )

Both require subscription fees.

I hope this helps!
- Doug
For more about using geocaching content with car navigation systems,
read:
http://travelbygps.com/articles/cachetour.php
For more about which GPS for hiking and geocaching, read:
http://travelbygps.com/articles/which_GPS.php#hiking

With a free program from Lowrance you can load into the iFinder Hunt any
information that is included in the GPX file a premium member receives
from geocaching.com. I am assuming you can do the same with the other
iFinder models, but I can only vouch for the Hunt.

Don