I discovered Geocaching two weeks after buying a Palm m500. I got it at a bargain price but it was still enough that the thought of buying another toy seemed out of range for a while. Thankfully I mustered up all my courage, saved up my change and bought one anyway. Since I had just purchased the Palm, my first consideration was a GPS that would attach to it. However, the m500 sported the new "Universal Connector" and it wasn't quite universal yet. Still, as a Palm user I dreamed of somehow bringing these two devices together.

I've always avoided "two-in-one" devices, believing that with them you actually give up more than you gain. Therefore I've steered away from the Garmin iQue in favor of connectivity rather than combination. Early on I purchased a cord to connect my eTrex to my Palm and later found a Magellan GPSCompanion in a closeout bin at Staples. It was a cool purchase and a lot of fun to play with, but when I upgraded my Palm to the Tungsten T5 and Palm decommissioned the Universal Connector, I was out of luck and out of link. I did, however, enter a new world of possibilities: Bluetooth.

When the concept of Bluetooth first hit the news I was excited. This was revolutionary stuff-connecting devices wirelessly to each other. Cell phones linked to laptops, PDA's receiving menus wirelessly from restaurants as you walked by on the sidewalks, more peripherals and fewer wires. Bluetooth was the answer to all problems and, well, it was priced like it too.

Picking My Teeth….er…My Bluetooth

When the price came down and reality came up, I started investigating a few Bluetooth GPS's that would work with my T5. I have to admit, I'm cheap and price was definitely a big factor for me. On the other hand, I'd like to think I'm pretty realistic. I've already got a top-notch Palm, why do I need a three hundred dollar Bluetooth GPS? I narrowed my search to a few units in the $100-$150 range.

DeLorme Blue Logger

The first Bluetooth GPS that I seriously considered was the DeLorme Blue Logger, mainly due to their advertising through Geocaching.com. The Blue Logger seems to be DeLorme's wireless version of their Earthmate GPS (even down to the color scheme). I had the chance to play around with one of these at the Midwest GeoBash event and was immediately impressed. My Palm found the GPS's Bluetooth signal and locked onto the signal in a matter of seconds. And at a price of about $150.00, which included DeLorme's mapping software, it seemed just about perfect.

However, reviews on Amazon.com seemed to indicate otherwise. While I don't always rely on the experiences of others as a basis for my own, I was disturbed to see only one review that had more than 2 stars (out of five). The purchasers complained about the units breaking easily, about it simply not connecting to their PDA's and there were repeated complaints about the on/off button. These were enough to cause me to examine some other options.

Having said that, I think one of the very cool features of the Blue Logger is…well…it's logging capability. The Blue Logger records up to 50,000 trackpoints completely separate from a PDA or laptop. This means that at a mere 1.75" x 3.25" x 0.75", you can toss it in the back seat of your teenager's car and later download exactly where they've been and what they've been up to (for the nine or so hours that the battery works). It's a very cool feature if you're conducting covert operations, but not terribly useful for geocaching, and it simply wasn't a feature that I was terribly interested in.

Holux GPSlim 236

I began looking at Holux's line of Bluetooth GPS's because they seem to be everywhere. A quick search on eBay pulled up several Holux units and a search on Amazon.com did the same.

Holux is a Taiwanese company that has been in the GPS business since 1994. They manufacture a variety of GPS's including a model that seems to be on par with the Garmin eTrex line. While Holux might not be the first name you think of when it comes to GPS, they're definitely a name to remember. The company is currently shipping over 50,000 units a month and has plans to expand and produce a line of consumer electronics for cars ("PC on Wheels") in the coming year.

Holux has several Bluetooth models to choose from, as well as several USB connected GPS models to which they've given the confusing designation of "G-mouse," apparently due to their resemblance to a USB connected mouse. Early in my search, the Holux GR 231 kept popping up as a good contender, but then the GPSlim 236, which was released in April 2005, began to appear and I immediately saw some great benefits to this upgrade.

While the price on the Holux models was certainly attractive, one of the first factors that drew me to them was the battery life. The rechargeable lithium-ion battery supplied with the unit boasts 10 hours of continuous use and 16 hours on power saving mode. This is due, in part, to the new Sirf III chipset, which gives this unit more power and higher sensitivity with less power consumption. This was another big plus.

On top of this, size does matter and the GPSlim 236 seemed amazingly small. At 1.8 x 2.6 x 0.8 inches and weighing in at only 1.9 ounces, it's roughly the size of a box of small wooden matches.

The GPSlim 236 ships with a driver/manual CD and a car charger as well as a standard AC charger. The only thing lacking is a USB data cable that can be ordered separately but only seems useful for non-Bluetooth connections (the strangely named G-Mouse adaptation). At this point I really don't see that I'll need it.

The unit also has a port for an external antenna (MMCX connector). It's my understanding that users who buy these GPS's strictly for vehicle navigation often mount the unit under their dash and rely on an external antenna. Ebay prices on these antenna were cheap enough that I might consider one some day, but I'm in no hurry.