There are so many different types of GPS devices on the market today - all with great price tags and they all do some pretty awesome things.
I’ve picked the Garmin iQue 3600 PDA with built in GPS, the HP iPAQ rx5915 Travel Companion and the Garmin eTrex Venture HC Handheld GPS to compare.
Here the Line-up which is linked to Amazon.com for your easy purchase:
What I like about the Garmin iQue 3600 is that it has a nice compact design and it includes the excellent Garmin software to go with it. It has a really decent price too - I mean c’mon this is a full fledged portable computer capable of playing movies, music, storing your contacts and transporting documents. What I don’t like about it is that it has the Palm OS. Even though I use OS X and Ubuntu Linux the Palm Operating System just doesn’t cut it for me. I’m already on a limited device (for power) and now and locked into a proprietary OS - I just can’t do that.
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HP iPAQ rx5915 Travel Companion publisher: Hewlett Packard price: |
The HP iPAQ rx5915 - Now this baby is sweet and it is my favorite of them all. I’m already partial to PDAs with built in GPSs and I actually paid a lot more for mine than what this is selling for. I’m really impressed by HP’s design on this one, it’s very modern and it really gives you a sense of mobility. They’ve gone all out here and have stepped far away from the typical PDA design. This device is loaded with the Windows Mobile OS and even though I’m not a Windows user on my laptops I really like the Windows Mobile Operating System for a handheld device. This comes with the popular and proven SiRF GPS chipset and is loaded with navigation software and maps.
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Garmin Etrex Venture HC GPS Receiver publisher: Garmin price: |
No matter what there’s a place for this type of device. I call the Garmin eTrex Venture HC a ‘Disposable GPS’ and I don’t do that because it’s a bad device. I call it a Disposable GPS because it’s cheap enough and has enough functionality to be worthwhile taking to some of the more rugged places on the face of this earth. When you’re hiking in the Upper Sierra of Chihuahua, Mexico with the guys toting their ‘cuerno de chivo’ (AK47) for your protection this is the type of device that you’ll be wanting to carry. If you lose it, scratch or break it or even if it gets stolen from you it’s pretty rough to take, but it’s not as rough as losing or breaking your PDA. This is also a great first time GPS device - something you can pass off to a friend or family member when you decide to upgrade to something more sophisticated.
By the way - take EXTREME care in the back-country of Mexico. If you happen to stumble on something that doesn’t look right - my suggestion is don’t ever touch it, don’t look at it, and keep moving as if you had never seen it.
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