Monday, May 25th, 2015

	Garmin eTrex Legend
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was my first dedicated GPS device and in fact the only one. 
Before Garmin I used Windows Mobile based PDA Yakumo Alpha GPS, which
had a GPS receiver with quite low accuracy. In open area the accuracy
was about 10m, in the city five times worse. Even with GPS this weak
I started with geocaching and after first hundred of found geocaches
it was clear, that I need something better. And that something was 
Garmin eTrex Legend. 

Having accuracy between two and fifteen meters, it was much more 
precise and with battery life more than 20 hours of continuous usage
on a pair of 1800mAh NiMH accumulators it quadrupled battery life of 
Yakumo. The only problem with Garmin I ever had, were the bad 
connectivity options. It has only a RS-232 port and there was no Mac
software for uploading/downloading waypoints and tracks. So after 
three years I put Legend away and started to use BlueTooth GPS with
my Palm (T|X, later Centro) and later integrated GPS in my phone.

Few days ago, I resurrected Legend and as I now have a Linux machine
with serial port, I have no problem with connecting the device. I was
surprised with the accuracy, which is way better than I remembered.
I found just four city geocaches and the dilution of precision was
between 2m and 5m all the time. The only thing I'm missing from my
phone is the electronic compass, but it's no big deal.

I shouldn't have abandoned Legend in the first place, since it's a
great device. I'm going to correct that mistake and start to use it
now, six years later. Next thing to do is to obtain a bike mount
because I could use a good GPS for cycling. Welcome back, Garmin.

.