A Guide to Purchasing a GPS receiver.

This is a guide for purchasing a GPS unit for the sole purpose of Geocaching.

If you want to learn more about GPS in general, please look here.

Features Needed:

First off, you can't really go wrong purchasing any GPS receiver mentioned on this website There are several makes to choose from - ALL are fine. Although owners of these units aren't as rabid as the Apple/Windows wars, you can probably talk to any user and they'll swear by their unit.

Make sure whatever your GPS unit is, that it has the bare minimum features (£100 and up):
Store waypoints (200+ waypoint storage is cool, but for Geocaching 10 is ok)
Long battery life (20+ hours is pretty standard)
Waterproof - It should be submersible. Many caches are near water and you may end up dropping your GPS unit in there.
A wrist strap - Read the above line for why.
12 channel parallel receiver system - basically means it can get good reception in most conditions. Read the box and make sure it says this.

A basic unit is the Magellan Meridian or the Garmin eTrex GPS.

If you want to spend a little more, you might want these features as well (£200 and up):
Waypoint averaging. When you place a cache it helps to average out the coordinates to get a good reading.
Altimeter - Shows you how high up you are. GPS can do this, but not as well. For most geocaches you do not need it.
Built-in Magnetic Compass - You can always bring a regular compass, but this helps quite a bit, especially when you get within 100 feet of a cache. You can also get a regular compass to accompany your GPS unit. The Magellan Meridian Platinum or the Garmin eTrex Summit GPS, for example, have a built-in compass and altimeter.
Map Capabilities - Downloading maps of the area to your GPS unit is great, but can get expensive. It will help let you know where nearby trails, rivers, etc. are located, however, which may increase your hiking pleasure. More information on Garmin maps can be found here.

Where to buy a GPS Unit:
Silly question .. The answer is from Finger Technology obviously !!

Is there a GPS for handhelds?
Yes.
We have receivers for both Palm & WinCE handhelds.
For the Palm we recommend the NAVMAN and for Pocket PC (WinCE) we recommend the NAVMAN or Pretec CF receivers.
However, keep in mind that you will be trudging through the woods with your handheld, so it might be better just to buy a regular GPS unit and a data cable instead.