- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
-
Would anyone like an old Garmin eTrex GPS to play with? (It’s free!) Please email me if you’re interested or have questions. I borrowed it about a year ago, and the owner’s now said he doesn’t need it back. I’d rather find someone who might actually want it than chuck it away or leave it gathering dust. The main criteria besides actually wanting it is being able to meet in town on my terms or get to a Wednesday night meeting. Someone keen on getting outdoors definitely preferred.
It’s one of the basic bright yellow ones. It’s identical to the $200 low-end hand-held Garmin eTrex units still available today (eg http://tinyurl.com/2fyqnmf at DSE), EXCEPT it doesn’t have a high-sensitive antenna. This means that unlike nearly every hand-held GPS available today, it doesn’t work well under trees. It’s pretty cool though that 12 years after the initial release, people still buy something that’s almost identical to this model — it does the basics well. The full PDF manual is downloadable from the support page on Garmin’s website: http://www.garmin.com/products/etrex/
If you’ve never used a GPS before then it’s good for figuring out how GPS’s work (and where they suck), and for learning about concepts and terminology, and about times when you’re much better off with a map and compass and a little applied intelligence. I found it most useful for getting a better idea of what I wanted to buy for myself, and it helped me figure out the questions I wanted to ask. It’s also still a perfectly good GPS to stash in a pack for an emergency, or use for getting a grid reference to apply to a map in the right conditions.
If you’re geeky then it comes with a serial cable to connect it to a PC to exchange data (exactly as the modern version does — that’s how much they’ve avoided changing it), but unless you have an old computer you’ll need a Serial to USB adapter which is about $45 in shops or $23.50 in better shops.
-
-
-
-