I
believe there's a reason that those eTrex units are so cheap. FroBro Goose had
one of those yellow ones, and we used it on my first five cache
hunts, back in June. I found that thing cumbersome and difficult to use. The
screen is very small and the buttons were not very well placed. It was a
headache for me, and I consider myself very adaptable to using electronic
gadgets.
Soon
afterwards, Goose sold it and bought a Garmin eMap. That's also the unit I
bought. It is MUCH better than the eTrex. It does cost more than most of the
eTrex units, I believe. If you're looking to get a GPS unit real cheap (like
for the kids, maybe), the yellow eTrex might be a good idea. But if you're at
least halfway serious about it, I feel that the entire
eTrex family will frustrate you.
I'm
not trying to advertise on this listserv, I just want to give some advice
if you're looking to buy a GPS. Goose and I got SWEET deals on our Garmin
eMap units from a store in Phoenix (Bronco One Electronics) that is one of the
top Garmin sellers in the world. They set the whole unit up, downloaded the
latest drivers, and installed the Phoenix area maps for free. You should at
least check out their deals before buying. I looked at Fry's Electronics and
some other stores, and Bronco One beat 'em.
Sorry if you felt spammed by my testimonial. They didn't pay me to say
this. :)
-FroBro Q-Tip
I thought I saw
an ad recently (Fry's Electronics, perhaps?) for the Yellow Etrex at $89, but
I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. Now I see two other related items of
interest on the Garmin web page (http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/) One is they're offering $50 rebates on the Etrex
Summit, Legend, and Vista models, and the other is they've announced the GPS
72 for November availability (just in time for the holidays!), which they're
billing as "the next generation of basic GPS units — right at home on land or
sea".
If you were
thinking about buying an Etrex, now may be the time.
Steve
Team Tierra
Buena