which unit for geocaching?

Hello,

I'm trying to decide which unit to buy for geocaching. I've read lots
of detailed reviews (most
notably at www.gpsinformation.net) and have narrowed my search down to:

Garmin GPSMAP 60CS
Magellan SporTrak Color
Magellan eXplorist 500, 600, or XL

They all get good marks, but I'm not sure if there's a clear choice
among them. It'd be great to
find a unit that plays nice with my Mac (I'm running Tiger). I've read
that the Magellan eXplorist 500
is compatible if I run VirtualPC, but I don't have any Mac info on the
other units.

Any advice appreciated!

Thanks!

Lawrence Brett wrote:

Lawrence,
If you haven't already, read

http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/geocaching/units.html
http://www.magellangps.com/en/gpsAdventures/geocaching/

where on the Garmin page you will see that on the Garmin 60 Series
there are other "Geolocation games".

And the Magellan page it reads that Magellan supports the other
geocaching web site - Navicache.

Someone else will have to tell you about the merits of a geocaching
manager software, I suppose if you do a lot of wandering in the same
area with a lot of caches, it would be a nice feature. Most geocaching
I've done is with a basic, non-mapping, unit - just give me the
lat/lon.

Also, in my opinion, a built-in compass doesn't seem worth the extra
money since you should carry a compass anyway. And regarding a
built-in barometric altimeter, I've never known a the elevation
readings to be very accurate, but still it's nice to have some idea,
and log of, your relative ups and downs.

SporTrak, its an older product line and it may become obsolete sooner
than the others you've listed.

I really like the SD cards used in the eXplorist series. I had a
Lowrance that used SD cards and it was great to be able to swap out the
memory without having to be near my PC.

So bottom line, of the three you've listed I take a harder look at the
eXplorist 500, I see you can currently get one for just under $310 at
Adventure Station
Here is my referral link
http://www.adventurestation.com/category/category.asp?x_ID=14179&ref=4TBG1123

I hope this helps!
- Doug
www.travelbygps.com

Doug made some good comments. The only one that made be chuckle a bit was
this one:
"Also, in my opinion, a built-in compass doesn't seem worth the extra money
since you should carry a compass anyway."
With a statement like that I wonder if he's really a serious geocacher. A 2
axis or 3 axis electronic compass built into the GPS is invaluable when
geocaching. It really helps out a lot, especially when reception is poor.

-Skramblr

I use a separate simple compass with a needle. (Silva makes them)
It does not use battery energy such as a compass that is builtin a GPS.
Further: my simple compass does not need calibration: a compass in a GPS needs
this after changing batteries f.i.

Piet

Original message was looking for geocaching GPS recommendations.
GPS electronic compass - always points toward the cache, even if you stand
still and turn.
Silva compass - has no idea where the cache is located - not as useful for
geocaching

-Skramblr