<br /><br />Anyway...yes, even without the laptop, I've used it on the water with great success, so long as I only needed it to point me in the right direction.<br /><br />Hope this helps! <br /><br />OK, your eTrex probably came with the necessary connection cable for a laptop..it'll plug (actually slides) into the bottom of the gps on one end and the other end is a serial fitting for a computer. (Serial looks a litte like a video cable for a monitor, with fewer pins in it). That's pretty much it...you don't need special drivers or anything to make it work..that's kind of the beauty of a serial interface.<br /><br />OK, assuming this is done..moving over to mapsource. I found it very intuitive to get it to work. Mapsource IS compatible with GPS (at least the version I have is?). I don't have my laptop handy here at the office, so I can't look up the exact options...but one of the menu sub-items is "send to gps"...<br /><br />Once you've plotted a course in the mapsource software..you can "send to gps"..it'll be stored as a trail on your gps that you can access...then use the simple nav functions in the gps to take you through the waypoints one at a time.<br /><br />You can also retrieve waypoints from the gps, which is handy if you mark a good fishing spot with the gps while on the water...you can store it in your computer too.<br /><br />Only real downside is that the mapsource cds are a little bit expensive. I was lucky, the guy I bought my gps from through in the "coastal waterways" mapsource cd for free. <br /><br />Anyway, It's very intuitive, I really don't think you'll have a problem getting it to go...if you do, feel free to ask anything specific that comes up and I'll be glad to answer as well as I can.
