Hiking/Car GPS - anyone tried an Etrex with Zire or iPaq

I am going on holiday in sweden next week, and following a recent navigational debacle I am borrowing a friend’s Garmin eTrex. I would quite like to use an external device to progam in waypoints and so on but not take a laptop.
I have a Palm Zire 71, an iPaq 3970, several Vxs and an m505.

Which one of these would be best to hook up to the Garmin? Cables for the Zire seem common but not for the iPaq, unless it is possible to use one for another model. Would it be worth buying some additional mapping software as well (I presume I will need something from Garmin for interfacing). Any advice.

Also, it seems that gpsu can now integrate the GPS from my trip with Google Earth - anyone have any experience with this?