Originally posted by Hospital_Rocket
While I got your attention, has anybody looked at or tried those Compact Flash (CF) adapters that turn a Pocket PC Device like an IPAQ into a GPS?
A
Nope, no one has.
As for which GPS to get, like everything else, it depends on what you plan to use it for.
If you want to be able to customize and upload your own maps (important to me), then by all means get a mapping one.
The Garmin GPSMap 76S is a great choice for this. The S at the end indicates that it has a built in barometric altimeter and a compass. Kind of odd to think really, but most GPS don't actually have a compass. They know where you are, but not which way you are facing; to get an idea of that, you have to move and they can tell you which way you are moving. Then they can display an electronic "compass".
If the alt and compass are not important to you, by looking around you can usually find the Garmins without the "S".
Color? Not important to me. May be to you if you look around and see one and just got to have it. We all do that.
External antenna? If you want to use it in you car, this maybe very important. My parent's Chevy Venture van apparently has some sort of coating on the windshield that completely blocks the GPS signal. With out an external antenna, no workie. My '89 Jeep does not. If you are only going to be hiking/walking, or boating, or 4 wheeling or something and aren't worried about the car thing, units with external antennas cost more and why?
WAAS Wide Area Augmentation System is a method of correcting atmospheric distortion of the signal to give more accurate positioning. Without it (or with it turned off) most receivers will give you about 10-15 meter accuracy, with DGPS about 5-7 meters, and with WAAS roughly 3 meters. This means if you stand at a spot in your yard and get a position fix with the GPS, that grid coordinate will be inside a circle centered on you with a radius of 3 meters, more or less. Frequently it will be a much smaller circle than that. Though it will also occasionally be larger.
I have an older Lowrance (when I got it, they were the only ones with the Military Grid system in them, and I was in the military) that I love for what it will do.
Next one will probably be a Garmin GPSMap 76.
The link to gpsinformation.net has been run for years by some guys named Joe Mehaffey, Jack Yeazel, and Dale DePriest. It is one of the most complete resources on any subject that I have ever found on the web. One could literally spend many, many hours spread over many, many days digging through there. They are great at answering questions as well, if you can't find it on their site; at least they used to be.
Greg