Handheld GPS

I would go for the 62S. It will be more than $80 better than the 62. Not so familiar with the Dakota.

What do you like about them, and have you considered the eTrex range? If you don't care about a larger screen, an eTrex will give you a slightly smaller screen in exchange for less weight and a longer battery life and will probably cost less, unless things have changed in the last year or so. I bought an eTrex Vista HCx in the end, which had a very similar feature set to the GPSMAP60CSx but with a smaller screen. Just looking at the GPSMAP62, does anyone know why Garmin is still using tubular antennas in a new release? My understanding was that any advantage from the tubular shape over a flat shape is virtually insignificant now that high-sensitive antennas are available. Personally I'd not go for the Dakota because I'm not yet convinced about touch-screens in a potentially harsh environment, but that's just me and others probably think differently or have different needs. I know my touch-screen phone would certainly suck, at least.

Hmm, a big topic. The appropriate model depends primarily on the intended use(s). However, whatever the use, only buy a GPS that has a high sensitivity receiver (which is just about all of them, these days). A GPS can be used for positioning, navigating, auto-routing and/or playing (geo-caching). With each of there uses, the GPS can give you useful information (model-dependant) like rates of travel, altitude, compass functions etc. Positioning - use GPS in conjunction with map and compass - only need a position to locate on a paper map - look for smaller screen and longer battery life. Navigating - want contour maps loaded in the GPS (in conjunction with larger scale paper map and compass - note : never rely solely on a GPS for navigation) - look for larger screen, colour, data card, e-compass Auto-routing : buy an in-car model A few comments Manufacturers - the Garmin interface is superior although it has functional limitations. The stated battery life is wildly optimistic - only approached if you turn off all functions and don't use it for a position fix. For Aus maps, I use OzToppo V2.1 (V3 available but I haven't seen it in operation) Any other functions (camera, mp3/4 player, touchscreen, etc) will severely impact battery life I have a Garmin Colorado (discontinued - similar to Dakota but without the touchscreen) - wanted to use it with loaded maps and in-car. Should have bought one for navigation only (Vista HCx or Legend HCx) and another model for in-car

My earlier comment was related to the difference between the 60 and the 62S. I feel the extra features make the extra price worth while. Also those Aussie prices look quite good, except the Aussie dollar is very high of course. I use a 60CSX and have not used the Dakota, Colorado or the high end Etrex models. Though in my late middle age, the screen size is definitely an issue. From my experience, everyone uses GPS in different ways, and as birnieq says, the model depends on how you intend to use it. After using a GPS tramping for over 10 years now my eyes are still my primary means of navigation. I still always have a compass and paper map in my pack too. Probably the main thing my GPS now does is act as a track logger, so how much track log it stores and battery life are issues. The 60CSX stores track of the card until the card fills up, which us forever on a 2G card. For battery life, 4AA NiMh rechargable batteries will get me through a weekend with the GPS on all the time while walking. For longer trips I use Lithiums and will get 5-6 days out of a pair of AAs.

Oh.. above battery times are with the compass switched off.

For what it's worth I've found the advertised battery life of mine to be fairly reliable, although I give it grunty (but rechargeable) batteries and don't typically hold it in front of me all the time with the map back-lit, or anything like that. My regular use is to leave it switched on in the top of my pack, tracking where I'm going, and I might pull it out 4 or 5 times during a day for various reasons. That'll normally get me through at least a weekend, probably 3 days, on one set of batteries if I switch it off overnight.

Hi guys I have another dumb question.if a GPS has no internal memory and you have SD card with maps on it in the GPS how does it store tracks and routes

Most do (if you mean Garmin ones), but I haven't seen the most recently released models. The internal-memory tracks are usually 10000 points (from memory) and then it'll start writing over the top. How long this lasts depends on how often you tell it to record a point, but for me it was about a day-walk length trip. Most also advertise that they have space for X stored tracks, which means you can save what's in the current memory to an internally stored location so it won't be overwritten. If you do this, however, it'll remove something like 4 out of every 5 points in the saved version so the track takes less space. When you have a model with an SD card, though, you can just turn on a particular feature and it'll store the full track detail in a GPX file on the card for each day, without dumbing down the data at all. The only catch (at least with mine) is that you can't access these stored tracks from the GPS, only from a computer later on. When you have that you can pull the files off and just store them or edit them to pull out the parts as you see fit.