[OSM-newbies] Best GPS hand held device for my needs

[Lauri Hahne]

First of all, the type of device you should considered depends mainly
on whether you're more likely to
a. map by walking/cycling
b. map by driving

If 'a' is your choice, I'de recommend you to get a Garmin device such
as eTrex Legend HCX which is an excellent portable device and also
features car navigation for in car use. By default it apparently comes
with a map which includes the US interstate system but you can buy a
road map for it and it does routing.

If you're of of the 'b' type, then you should buy a car navigator
which can record tracks. At least TomTom units are known to work if
you install some third party software in it though I'm not sure
whether the latest software versions allow you to do this.

Yet another possibility is to buy a smartphone with either internal
gps or with a bluetooth gps dongle. Then you can run a logging
software in the phone to generate gps tracks and you can buy a
commercial navigation software if you want to use it for driving
directions.



2008/7/27 Dick Angus <RJA-Linux at shaw.ca>:
> As my profile says I am a raw newbie at GPS and mapping. I've never owned or
> used a GPS device. I live in a small town in Southern Alberta, Canada and as
> a retirement project would like to try and add some information about my town
> of Okotoks and area to Open Maps. I run Kubuntu Linux (always kept current)
> on both a desktop and a laptop.
>
> I have friends who have built in nav systems in their new cars so I've seen a
> bit of what goes on. I would like to get a hand held device that I can use as
> an in car navigator for trips around North America or Europe and also use as
> a mapping device for this project. Being able to ask how to get me from my
> house to my son's place in San Francisco by the shortest route and then have
> the device guide me would be amazing. I have looked at the various guides in
> the WiKi, but I don't even know enough to understand what they are saying.
> Can anyone pass on advice on a good device to meet my needs or should I say
> desires?
>
> TIA and I look forward to being able to add to this great project.
> --
> An old mainframer getting modern
>
> _______________________________________________
> newbies mailing list
> newbies at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/newbies
>



-- 
Lauri Hahne