Toedipper looking for advice on minimal gps investment

[matzie]

In what's become a slightly extended lunch hour, , I read *this article* about a new GPS satellite on Slashdot which had a link to geocaching.com. I read a few pages and now I'd like to have a go.

I want to spend as little money as humanly possible (because (a) I don't have much to spare and (b) I might not be as enthusiastic a few weeks from now ) so I've had a look over ebay to get an idea of what's around.

What I'd like from this community is any "watch out" type advice like, "Don't buy a XXXX, because".

All I want is to be able to view co-ordinates. No need for mapping. I'm happy to have a "brick" 1st-gen unit - but I don't want to fall into any traps for the unwary buyer.

Miscellaneous kit I have that interoperability with would be nice but not essential:
laptop
nokia 3650
old psion 3a pda


So thanks in advance for any advice you can share with me!

Cheers

Matt Saunders

[Darren]

That's a very wide field! Pretty much any handheld GPS manufactured in the last 5yrs would suffice. Basically you should look for a 12 Channel receiver (earlier units were 8 or less) which speeds up the satellite lock and also NMEA out to allow connection to your laptop etc.

If you narrow your search to the major players Garmin and Magellan you will be hard pushed to find a duffer amongst any of their products, highly regarded units such as the Garmin GPS 12 can be found on Ebay around $40 and the newer eTrex units are often sold for less than $80.

I would go for a Garmin eTrex which is inexpensive and easily resold if you don't get hooked!
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Darren Griffin

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