Which PDA to buy

How much you got to spend???

$2400 will get you a Sony UX Series Micro PC that is not much bigger than a PDA and is a fully functonal XP Professional PC with USB port and all sorts of cool stuff.

Top end of market but is a truly awesome device. Saving my chips for one!

A review can be found here

Cheers
Muddy

First the negative - PDAs are generally not water/salt-spray proof. I have an old Magellan for the boat & hiking and use the laptop or a PDA in the 4WD. A marine-targetted GPS with mapping functions may be a better overall solution.

If you think the PDA is going to survive then the best value could be a iPAQ 1950 with OziExplorer. Takes an SD card for as many maps as you want. The only catch may be interfacing the Garmin. Cables are available for some units but are generally quite expensive. A better/cheaper alternative could be a HP bluetooth GPS from Organiser World in Melbourne for $89 (currently on special). I use one of these with an iPAQ rw6828 and apart from slowish cold starts it works very well.

Another alternative could be a iPAQ 4700 as it has a VGA screen. Same issues with interfacing but as it's been around for longer there may be more cables. These are discontinued and you may pick up a bargain somewhere.

Adrian

Got a Dell Axim X50v - one of the faster ones. Had a 624mhz processor so it can do the work faster and more easily. With a SD slot and also a CF (Compact Flash card, heaps of space for data

Have the Asus mypal 636 PDA, with inbuilt GPS antenna.
Run Oziexplorer.
Most PDAs have the 3.5" screen which is small.
Problem reading the screen sometimes in full sunlight and/or reflections, which is also a PDA problem.
Lasts over 4 hours on battery.
Syncs with PC via USB like most PDAs.

I wouldn't recommend using a PDA on a boat, I use an XDA Mini and Tom Tom Software on the road, works fine, some little bugs. It wouldn't work on water unless you find a marine solution/mapping system. On my boat I have a Navman Trackfish 6600, awesome but your talking $3k.

Ian,
I have a Gamin 11+ and a Dell axim for the fourby, I use OziCE.

Recently picked up a boat and had the lowrance sounder upgraded to include a GPS. This cost a few bob, but I think it was worth it as I only have one unit on the boat and it is weather proof. It means I dont have to mess about with shifting gear between the two vehicles.
With the GPS integrated into the sounder I get speed and 'depth to bottom' on the same display - whether its on the sounder or GPS screen. Sounders also come with boat suitable mounts - saves the need to mess around with a GPS and PDA mount + associated cables.

The Sounder GPS screen is only B/W, same size as PDA but does not have the maps like I do on the PDA.
This does not concern me to much as I mainly want to be able to track back and remember places of interest.

So if you thinking of a sounder I'd recommend this approach.

I got my garmin -> dell X3 cable from the states a few years ago. I have noticed that Brian at GPSoz now sells them also. Dell's current axim - x50 has an optional serial cable, my guess is the this would mean you can use your PC/Garmin cable with the PDA. Quite happy with my Dell unit.
For similar money you could also look at a navman pin. Integrated gps and PDA - saves placing and extra piece of hardware and cables.

Paul