Howdy and welcome to AZ geocaching!

Just my opinion, but I think the Garmin Etrex Legend or Vista is the best 
bang for your buck when it comes to GPS units. The vista can be found for a 
pretty reasonable price these days on Ebay too.

I have a Legend (pretty much the same as the Vista) and I have been very 
pleased with it. I like it so much, that I have been using it for the past 
year for ballooning competitions (I fly hot air balloons). I also have a 
Garmin 3+ (I did, I sold it) that I used for ballooning, but I like the 
Legend because it is very small and handy and started using it for 
competitions when It was originally purchased for geocaching! Has lots of 
great features (even 1000 waypoints stored). The Legend has all the features 
of the Vista except... the Legend store 8mb map while the Vista has 24mb. 
Also, the Vista has an altimeter and something else on it that the Legend 
does not. I would like to purchase a Vista as well and keep the Legend as my 
backup. These two are the only Etrex models that allow for map downloading.

The only problems I have ever experienced with the Legend/Vista is what has 
already been discussed here... the rubber grip that goes around the side of 
it may start to peel off after a bit of heavy use on hot days. The 
glue/paste on the backside melts away when it gets hot out. I never turned 
mine back in to have this problem fixed and have been using the GPS for 
almost 2 years now since this first happened and the grip is still on there. 
  But, that is the only prob I have experienced with it.

>>>Steve (Team Tierra Buena Wrote):

>One other caution: You can’t really take advantage of the mapping 
>capabilities of the Vista unless you >spring for one or more of Garmin’s 
>proprietary MapSource CDs. Those are hard to find with any >significant 
>discounting, and they ain’t no bargain, but they are the only thing that 
>will work, as far as I >know.

Steve is correct, the base map is very BASic :).  Not much to it. But, you 
will find that with any brand GPS you buy. You simply have to purchase 
mapping software. The Garmin Mapsource is actually the best bargin out there 
really. Mapsource's topo maps cover the entire USA on 2 disks (west and 
east). Each one costs like $116 dollars each (or somewhere around there). 
Any other mapping software I have seen puts each state in a seperate package 
and usually on 4 or 5 disks for each state. Each state is priced at about 
$100 each! Now, go out and buy all 50 states. If you travel around the 
country like I do.. this is not practical! However, the Mapsource is not 
quite as detailed (1:50) as those state map CD's(1:24), but it is plenty 
enough detailed for me.

Scott
Team Ropingthewind

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