GPS

Congratulations Chambo. It only gets better from here on in!!

It depends on whay you intend using it for. I have a Garmin Vista, bu if I did it again I would go for something that takes an external antenna, not a re-radiating antenna. I would also want something with a lot more battery life than the Vista.

Glenn

Batteries can be a concern. After all other things have been considered, if it comes down to a choice, try and get one that uses the same size rechargeable batteries as most of your other gagets e.g. camera, mp3, led torch etc. You can use an extension pwr cord to the lighter outlet but having cords hanging everywhere is a pain.

Agree with all.. it depends what you intend to do with it.. I highly recommend Johnny Appleseed GPS in Brissy and thay have an excellent webpage. They are more than happy for you to tell them what you want to do and they will advise what is best for you.
Personally, I wanted something that could do both, street navigationas well as be suitable for off road/ ie off the beaten track and even walking if possible. I bought the Garmin GPS 60C. It has a color display, can be run from the cigarett lighter or it takes 2 AA batteries, it can have an external antennae but I have it mounted on the dash and have never needed one.. it is also water resistant small enough to fit in your pocket if you decide to go for a walk and it runs with Oxieplorer etc when plugged into a laptop.
It is not light a steeet pilot in that it hase vocal commands.. you can tell it to find an address etc from where you are and it will give you turn by turn prompts (beeps to tell you to look at it) then gives you eg righ in 100m/20 seconds etc.. there isn't many GPS that can do street NAv and also be good for navigation away from the citiy streets etc.. you will find that most 4WD dtracks (expect main rd like Oodnadatta track. overland etc are not on most city navigaots GPS' so if you want to hit the back tracks stay away from Sat NAv, street pilots etc and find soemthing that does both.. Of note the Garmin GPS 60CS also has a compass in it (if you are standing still it can tell you which way you are facing, most others can only tell you whih way you are moving.. (this is good if you are not on a track and need to know which direction to head off in.. but not really a feature for an 'incar' type situatin more if you are on foot..
Oh did I mention the 60C can alos do marine navigationso if you have a boat. it really is in my mind the perfect compact GPS...

I prefer the idea of a mouse GPS receiver on the dash feeding a PDA with OziExplorer loaded on Windows CE. PDA is powered from cigarette lighter, and you feed the PDA with maps/routes etc from your desktop (via a memory card). OziExplorer is getting very good in the later versions, and you can get a wide variety of maps, depending on whether you're just highway driving or need a 1:25000 map for bush work. A bit more fiddling than the packaged products getting around, but a versatile solution. A mate of mine has his hooked up to a tablet PC - harder to mount, but a BIG screen size!

David (from this site) has the same software, but I think he runs it on a laptop with special stands etc. Great for the type and amount of work he does, but far too big and intrusive for my application.

Good luck with it

Hi Chambo
gps are a bit like cars - you get the basics ones that just do the job and tell you where you are and the ones that do everything. I guess the question that you have to ask is how much do you want to spend?. Prices can range from a couple of hundred to tens' thousands. The garmins gps are a good brand and come with lots of accessories and are quite reliable - just what out for the buttons that click down like the one on the eTrex Venture.
http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/products.html#mapping
happy hunting

Hi Chambo,

You've got a lot of info on this subject already, but if you want a wide oppinion, You might consider looking through the many similar threads here.

Chambo
I have a brand new Magellan Sportrak Color available if you are interested. I bought several from the States and loaded the latest firmware and Australian Basemap (8 MB). It comes with extra maps and software (all you could ever need!) on CDs and DVDs. The Sportrak Color has been superceded by the Explorist Color models, but is still an excellent device. It has a very clear display. It has 32 MB of RAM which enables you load about 24 MB of Map regions from DiscoverAus Streets and Tracks. So as a stand alone handheld it is very capable (also has built in compass, barometer and thermometer!) It also come with cable for plugging into computer to run OziExplorer software.
The whole package is $550. Last year they were retailing for $800. Send me a member message if you would like details of what is included in the package. Chambo, you won't do a better deal than this!