etrex vista

“does anyone have this model? it seems like a bit of reading the instructions may be necessary. i received it for my birthday, in a kit with a topo cd and a street map cd. can it hold all of this info? any hints, tips, do's and don'ts will me much appreciated. thanks!”

“Holy crap...the Vista is the king of the Etex's.

Don't worry about what it won't do cause you'll never need to use what it doesn't have.”

“I have the E-trex Venture.. I guess I'm not too much help, other than also recommending the MapSource program, which stores waypoints, routes and such. Not sure if the program you have does that, but if not, check it out.

By the way, happy birthday.”

“happy bday. i got u nothing : )”

“yeah. both CDs are 'mapsource'. hmm... i guess i'll just have to break down and start studying.”

“thanks, scorchfire. it's such a nice nothing!”

“i'm so glad u enjoyed it, pookie!”

“i was going to go ahead and eat it, but i think i'll play with it for a while!”

“dammit! i degenerated my own thread!”

“LMAO”

“go geocaching, raddy daddy.

Say, I can remember when I wished you a happy 30th or 40th or something... and EVERYONE BELIEVED IT. And you tried so hard to convince them you weren't that old.
LOLOLOL ;-P Happy happy raddy!!”

“how old is he really?”

“Oh it'll take some reading through the Manual, but if you catch on quick to things it'll be a snap.

Learn to take waypoints, how to change their name, change their screen icon. *Creating* waypoints from coordinates is nice to know, imo, and to *deleate* them also cause you'll be making ALOT of them.

Download the Street CD and go for a cruise tommorrow. You'll see yourself in real time as a cursor cruising down a digital map on your scrreen. Zoooom out to see where you are in reference to your town, county, state, etc.

And give your self 3 days before you smash the thing, because the frustration eases with time.”

“Rad, I have the Vista too. Still learning how to use it though. It really does a lot. Dub was pretty knowledgeable about this, so maybe he will chime in...”

“I have been using Mapsource with my Garmin eMap for years. You can build routes and create waypoints on your computer, then download to the GPS. You can also save waypoints on your hike and store them on the computer when you get back.

I can store all the topo maps for the So Cal mountains and Eastern Sierra on my 8M chip. The basemap has all the major highways in the US programmed in.

Play with your GPS for about 20 hours just walking and riding around before using it seriously on the trail. Go through the owners manual from front to back in the process.”

“Raddy? Trail??! He'll plot cool motorcyle rides through downtown Atlanta. ;-P”

“many happy returns compadre....
will that doo hickey help pirates navigate the isles?”

“i lost mine....”

“Raddy, happy birthday!! i miss you! for your present, i got you a monkey...but it was real cute, so i decided to keep it.”

“You still post here???

(Happy Bidet)”

“lizs, you're a stinker! (only because you're correct!)

om, i think it has nautical stuff, too!

thanks phil and buddur. that was the kind of info i was looking for. i was wondering if i could just save, save, save... but i guess i can download and save good stuff on my pc. cool, guys!”

“scorchfire, i'm 14!”

“I received the Vista from Santa and it has been my constant companion from Wisconsin to Peru. I've loaded it up with topos, street maps, routes, tracks and haven't even come close to using 1/4th of the 24mb of memory.

One of my favorites is the Trip Screen which can customized to the users preferences.

I have used it for 20-30 hours and have started getting very comfortable using it. I've yet to use the best fishing times feature but that is coming soon I hope!

I found the MapSource software to be extremely intuitive to use and download to the unit.

Now if it just had a color display.....”