ANY GPS GURU,S HERE?

[feralmerril]

First, I am electronicly challanged. My hobby is trail rideing with ATV,s.
I own a garmin E-trex but find the screen far too small to read easily. I have been thinking of takeing along a old laptop and useing mapworld with my gps. Everybody says the shakeing would ruin the laptop.
I have been tempted to buying a garmin 650T montanna for the larger screen but am too cheap to lay out the $650 to $700s for one.
Yesterday I led a ride. One of the guys had a gadget called "Gelaxy 2 tab 7". I was dumbfounded when he showed me it. It has about a 7" or 10 " screen and showed a huge map with the tracks of our ride we had just made on it! On top of that it took fine pictures of our ride and was on the screen! He said it will do everything else a computer will do!
He paid about $300s for it on amazon. I could hardly belive it and still dont understand it. If these thing are that good for 300 bucks, how can garmin and others sell GPS`s for $700s that wont do a fraction of what this thing will do for less than half as much?

 

[M&P Freak]

Take a look at GPS made for the off-road enthusiast: Voyager by Trail Tech

As good as it gets.

 

[Damn Yankee]

Maybe you can get some info here.

GPS Receiver Information, Software, and Hardware Reviews of Garmin, Lowrance, Magellan and other GPS Receivers

 

[feralmerril]

Thanks for those leads! I feel like a caveman in this tech world. I have a lot of studying to do this winter. I want to update my stuff but hate laying out money in mistakes.

 

[KaTz]

merril hello, yea i too seem techno dumb because i bought a gps thinking it was a wiz to figure it out , well 2 yrs later im still lookin at the box LOL .
I bought what others told me was the best a Garmin 60CSX along with a nice mount for the ATV , I have turned it on and used it but yet to do anything else with it . I have put a screen saver on it to protect the screen from getting scratched . I pd $ 199.00 on E-Bay it was used and the person selling it needed money . a great deal - never regreted at all glad i did ..I buy from e-Bay all the time and have never had any problems Ever ..also check on KSL with so many people needing money you can find some outstanding deals ..

now back to the GPS - you tube has great videos on how to use these GPS gadgets i just cant sit still that long .

I cringed at the $ 199.00 bucks yet the new ones I believe are stupid in price and wouldnt pay more that what i did ..

 

[mwtdvm]

GPS and you..

FM,
I would not take a 'puter on the trail. I also feel your pain on the small screen. I have a Garmin 76CS and it is now about 8+ years old. I use mine mostly for fishing but have used it to find my way around my former 1800 acre hunting lease.

You need to find a young whippersnapper who does understand the tech and pay him to ...
1. Load the FREE topo maps on to your machine and
2. Set up a flow sheet for you to follow to download your routes and way points. Editing them is easy after that.

I use mine mostly for fishing and while the boat has an antique and user hostile GPS, I sit and punch the way point button every time we get a strike. I then share this with my boat partners so they can see where the action was..

 

[feralmerril]

I still am some confused. This samsong notebook my friend had wasnt much bigger than a thin large sandwich. As I said before he claims it will do about everything what a laptop will do and plays many movies etc to boot. It does as I visualised what my little e-trex does after I down load it at home to see the trails I have been on only much better! It was almost like looking at goggle earth on my puter at home with the tracks where we had been! He also showed me some fine pictures of where I had just led them!
This guy seems to have the best of everything and a gadget freak. He drives the state of the art RZR, camera equipment etc. I am going to get him over and run me through his toy. If the thing dont shake apart it looks to me like it costs half what the best GPS does and is many times better, bigger to read, takes pictures, watch movies, and cruise the net! All depends on if it will hold up I guess. I plan on keeping a record on every trail I ride. I just learned how last year. I took a chance and downloaded my e-trex on my map world deal or disk on my laptop at home. I noticed it showed tracks of every place I had rode with the GPS turned on. Maybe a 1000 to 2,000 miles of trails here! Then I hit the wrong button or option and zap! They all disappeared! Never to be recovered! Since then I have rode about another 500 to 1,000 miles of trails again and recorded it. Sure wish I had the right equipment and knowledge to use it when I started out years ago!

 

[1morethan8]

What happens when the GPS stops working?
I've been told the GPS has got more people lost than any other piece of navigation in history!
You ever wonder why the companies say in their instructions..
"Never Let The GPS Be Your Only Navigation Tool!"?

Anyone still use one of these...
Brunton Pocket Transit

If you want one Orvis has them on sale for $429.00.
Regular price is $538.00

 

[M&P Freak]

What your friend has is a 7-inch tablet computer that uses an operating system that is much like a smart-phone (Android). These gadgets are pretty slick and have great GPS capabilities. I good friend of mine is into astronomy and he has one of these tablets. He can go outside at night and, using an astronomy application and the built-in GPS, the tablet shows him the stars in the sky as he sees them. He can click on a star and get any information he may want. Is shows the constellations and all, pretty neat stuff. All this for relatively little money.

They are very nice, but the problem is the tablets are rather fragile. Off-roading with one of these things is guaranteed to not end well. You also get a pretty hefty monthly bill for the service (Verizon).

Samsung Galaxy Tab

 

[Biker Bill]

Merril

One additional thing to add to M&P Freak's post above - any tablet computer needs to have access to the Internet. Either thru WiFi or through a data plan from Verizon, AT&T, etc. as noted above.

Obviously, WiFi in the woods ain't gonna do it so you would need the device AND a data plan. The down stroke of the device is kind of like the old razor and razor blade argument; sell the razor cheap and keep selling the blades forever.

Bill

 

[DesertFox]

What you are paying for in a GPS unit is ruggedization. The handheld units are waterproof - try that with your tablet.

Note that the tablet or laptop will only work the way you describe so long as you have cell phone service, unless an external GPS receiver is connected. No cell phone service = no GPS, no moving map, nada... A GPS is talking directly to the satellites without the intermediary cell phone network.

There are lots of USB GPS receivers that you could buy to plug into a laptop, then use your StreetMaps, or whatever mapping program you want. Those work great and do not require cell phone service. And they are cheap.

Off-roading is going to be hard on the laptop. But with a SSD instead of hard-drive, it is possible. Not H2O proof though...

I should say that I have a Casio Commando smart phone that is H2O proof. Smart phones do have GPS, or at least some have a full implementation. So it actually can be used as a GPS even if there is no cell phone service. However, there are apps that must be used to cache the maps of the sections where you'll be in order to see that data without cell connection. There are plenty of apps for smart phones that will allow your track to be kept so that you can view it later in Google Earth or whatever mapping software you'd like. Screen=tiny - I know.

What's mounted on my quad? Magellan Meridian Gold. LCD screen excellent in sunlight, floats, works great.

 

[feralmerril]

Well, for right or wrong would you belive I bought two of em today? We went down to st. george at staples. They had them on sale for $250s. Theresa wanted one too for other reasons. Of course we bought extra memory for each and cases. Also bought a year warranty, a year was I think $55 apiece. Really bit the bullet. Okay then we went grocery shopping at cosco. They had then for $220 DOLLEEEERS!! (With the rebates). Yes I could have taken them back but I dont operate that way.
So we paid $60s too much + tax. My friend had offered to come and set them up for us. (He had said he got his on sale on amazon for just under $300s) They must be comeing down. We will see how this works out soon. Oh well, they are suppose to do a lot of other stuff.
Maybe I will waterproof mine and mount it on the quad in a pan of jello?

 

[RKBAGUY]

I agree with other posts that suggests a tablet might be a bit too fragile for rough duty... UNLESS you put a rugged case and good screen protector on it.

For software, look up an app called BackCountry Navigator on Amazon App store. It downloads USGS Topographic maps (and other types) to the storage card and you then use the GPS capabilities of the device to lay your position over the map, and assist with orienteering via stored way points.



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[feralmerril]

Thanks! I will let you all know how it works when I get it applied and tested. I dont know jack and am going to get my friend to set it up.