Ok, Please bare with me but I want to make sure I have a clear understanding before I purchase a PDA. I hate to admit it but $$ is my driving decision factor in the selection process of a PDA. I ONLY want to go 'paperless' I need a PDA, a hot sync cradle... anything else? Any suggestions on models? If I purchase the M105 what else will I need?

I apologize if this post seems 'simple' but I just cant afford to invest 50-100 bucks and not be able to do what I need. At this point that money would purchase a lot of nursery items *L*

Kristi

SweedKris
Macon, Georgia
www.members.cox.net/sweedkris
Caching while we wait for baby German (edd 07-01-04)

Geocaching.com Premium Membership $30 a year.
Some sort of GPX reader $0-$7.
Thats pretty much it.
As for caring out paperless geocaching look down the list of topics in this forum. Its all explained.
Also as a recent paperless convert I can tell you it is more than worth for trips out of Macon.

Happy Hunting!
-Amazingracer

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

Mtn-man has put together a tutorial on paperless caching here: Paperless Geocaching
Note that the link to gpx2html broken. It's new web addy is: gpx2html by FizzyMagic
Everyone has their favorite programs, but I use 'EasyGPS' to transfer waypoints to my eTrex and 'gpx2html' with 'Plucker' for web pages on my m130 pda. (All free programs)
This is using my wife's laptop with WinBlows. My Mac will be up and running within days and I am figuring out the method for OSX.
Anyone else?

(edited to remove redundant info. Was typing when AR posted.)

I am using an old Palm IIIxe PDA, 8mb of memory and a serial port connection to the laptop. The 8mb is enough for all my business stuff (Outlook) with plenty of room left for geocaching files. There are several 8mb PDA's for less than $100, if you look for the sales. Make sure the PDA cord will connect to your computer, some are still serial connections but most of the newer ones probably use USB.

Check ebay for some great deals on Palms. I got my Tungsten T for $150. It came with all accesories even the box and has just a few knicks on the shell. I was very impressed with it, despite the fact that I bought the wrong one (I meant T2.) But other than that I love it and swear buy it as my geocaching help, road atlas, arcade, MP3player, video player, and as soon as I figure out how to connect it, my internet away from home.

Happy Hunting!
-Amazingracer

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

Shucks to me 8mb is huge. I am synching to Outlook at work and also keeping about 500 geocache on my PDA (Plucker).

Not bad considering that I am using my five year old Palm V with only 2mb of memory. I waited about a year before even trying to make it work. I didn't think it would work at first but was pleasantly surprised.

I have my eye on something a lot faster and with more memory but for now my prehistoric box serves my needs.

BTW: Paperless geocaching is THE ONLY way to go.

My Tungsten has 16 mb (14 usable) and have used just over 6mb and i have over 300 cache mate files, realone, six games, SAHH 2004, Word, Excel and a video player. You may think nothing can be done with single digit MB but the palms surely disprove that!

Happy Hunting!
-Amazingracer

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

I just did the GPX2html/Plucker setup on my Palm (thanks to phat.bak for the link in his post above) and this works a LOT better than mobipocket, and uses less space on the Palm.

The GPX2html setup is easy, just download the file and follow the instructions. I found that setting up the reference locations file was worth the trouble ... I set it up to cover the whole metro area with locations such as Acworth, Canton, Lawrenceville, Fayetteville, etc. Plucker makes links for all caches within 10 miles of each location. If you would like to have that file, email me.

The Plucker setup was trickier. Despite what the Plucker page says, all the files you need for both the desktop and Palm are in the download file, plucker_desktop_setup_1.6.0.1.exe. When you run this it puts the palm files out for the next hot-sync and also does the desktop setup. The desktop setup is what messed me up, I took the advice in the GPX2html docs to use the Plucker console window option ... DO NOT DO THIS ... it bombs Plucker on my computer. Just say YES to all the setup stuff and only take a few options as follows. Click the 2 boxes to allow right-clicking files to Plucker ... this will allow you to send individual cache pages to the palm straight from the desktop. When you setup the channel for the cache html files, use the recommendations here:

paperless geocaching

There is another routine, GPXSpinner which also converts GPX files to html, but as I understand it you have to do this on-line. I am still in the dark-ages with a dial-up connection, so I wanted something that worked on the desktop ... i.e., GPX2html. It works!

Good Luck!
CharlieP

There is a downloadable version of GPX Spinner, which is what I use. It works great for me. One of the things I like about it is it creates a Spinner.gpx file that changes the Geocache ID prefix: Multi caches = MC, Mystery/Unknown caches = UC, etc. I set mine up to show Micros with an SC prefix (Small Cache). Check out the following link:

http://www.gpxspinner.com/download/

It will also combine multiple GPX files when creating the files for Plucker. Sometimes I'll combine my Not Found list with my Found list, so I have all the info on my PDA.

After reading Yoyo Man's post, I thought I would see how GPXSpinner compares to GPX2html. Well, the set-up is easy and Spinner converts a 500 cache GPX file in a few minutes. But when I tried to run the output html through Plucker, it ran for 4 hours and was doing some kind of countdown from 10,600 which would have taken another 6 hours. I interrupted it ... needed the computer. Is 10 hours to run one file normal? I am using an old P166 with 32mb RAM, maybe it runs in a reasonable time on the newer machines. Or maybe I am doing something wrong ... again.

FWIW,
CharlieP

I let Plucker run on the GPXSpinner output overnight ... it took about 6 hours to do the 500 cache file. The results are nifty, especially the ability to control many of the parameters such as distance from reference points, but I will probably stick with the GPX2html program, which allows much faster processing. But if you have a high-powered desktop machine, Spinner may be the way to go for you.

FWIW,
CharlieP