On Fri, 1 May 1998, Stephen Ambrose wrote:
> Birds Australia is selling Magellan Pioneer GPS units, complete with a car
> power adaptor, to its members for $299.
Wildsports (Sydney 02 9264 2095) has the Garmin GPS 38 featured in the
Easter sale brochure for $349 supposedly reduced from $449. This doesn't
include a car power adaptor.
I've been looking at buying a GPS. Magellan have a good reputation
but the Magellan Pioneer is very much their budget unit. It sells for
about US$100 (w/o car power adaptor) in the US. I gather from what I've
read it won't work well in less open situations such as heavy forest or
rugged terrain and will be generally slower at getting fixes than better
(and more expensive) GPS's. This certainly doesn't stop it being useful
for birding.
Maybe someone can post a short report about using a Magellan Pioneer
for birding?
The Garmin 38 mentioned above sells for US$150 in the US. It has a good
reputation as a cheap GPS which can connect to a computer. I'd been
thinking about buying the Garmin 38 previously but have decided to buy a
new 12-channel model, the Garmin 12XL (US$240), this is more to do with
being a technophile than a birder.
I've mentioned US prices above but personally I'd buy from Birds Australia
or Wildsports. Once you including shipping etc, I doubt the savings
are worth the hassles of buying from the US.
Andrew
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