Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Paperless geocaching

Yesterday I bought the Colorado 300 and paid SR1650 for it. The salesman at DarMoja knows little about the device and tells me it’s not known here except possibly among expat community. I already own some GPSr but the idea of paperless geocaching is very tempting. So far I managed to do without the –less in paperless by printing cache pages and carry them with me. I suppose you could still print pages –or notes- especially if you’re in the gulf area where the number of caches is still not that large. However, there were situations where I wished I had the cache page on my GPS screen .. now I do.

I read few months ago about some software issues in the Colorado that are yet to be resolved. It seems those are not fixed yet .. unless my version is old. For instance, I found that when I try to connect the unit to my notebook, it will not operate as a GPS, instead it will stay in connection mode with no possibility of the GPS running. The same happened with the 12-v adapter cable trying to charge the unit in my car. I’m not sure if this is also a software-related fault.

Update -

There is a utility in Garmin that checks for the operating software on your unit to make sure it’s current –thanks to flydad for alerting me to this-. I found an interesting post that helped power my Colorado 300 from the car while driving (without relying on the batteries). To do it, go to System – Interface and use Garmin Spanner .. Now if you connect the unit, it will ask if you like to go to mass storage. Say no .. that way, the unit will not go in connect mode when a USB cable is hooked to it.