I’m interested in buying a GPS locater and was wanting some info from people who have bought, used, or have one.
How much do they cost?
Where’s a good place to buy one?
What type of accuracy should I expect for mountain hiking/climbing?
Is there anything I should know about them, that I’m not thinking of?
there are loads on the market, check out camping stores for the widest ranges of models, but maybe not the cheapest prices… they all provide GPS data ( ) and there are loads of potential extraneous features like mapping, course plotting, setting markers etc…
you should go and check some out and see what features you need and find a price range you’re comfortable with… you can get a pretty cool one for under NT$10K, and the accuracy is unfortunately limited by the goddam american military, but hopefully soon there will be the european Galileo system which will be public, not military and will be accurate to 50cm!..
one thing to wach out for is linguistics… a lot of GPS positioners here are either locally made, or imports for the taiwan market and hence are chinese version… also 90% of mapping software they have for taiwan is only in chinese… but i guess there are ways around that… oh… and there’s size… usually small = pricey but not always… some are rediculously small… my buddy has a GPS unit in his watch… well actually more like his GPS unit has a watch strap on it… but still pretty nifty for tracking down hotsprings, waterfalls, bridges etc. and then always being able to find them the next weekend…
Accuracy has improved a great deal due to a change in the GPS regulations. You can a GPS store across the street from Guanhua (Chungshiao Hsinseng), in the basement where they sell CD-Rs and PDA stuff. According to my friends, having a Taiwan map requires a GPS with Chinese interface so it is not convenient for foreigners. GPS comes in two models: with or without maps. The map versions cost much more because of memory to store maps and the software. There is also a choice between black/white and color. Prices are between $5,000NT and $15,000NT. I use the eTrex because it’s so small. Have fun choosing: garmin.com/outdoor/products.html