Thread: GPS noob questions!

Outside of the car navigation or Google Maps, I've never owned an "outdoor" GPS device. I have a couple of questions which I've always wondered:

1. Automatic route marking - as I walk do GPS systems automatically track the route so that I can back exactly the way I came in? Does this chew up the battery life? Or do you set them to automatically drop a way point every 100m or something like that to conserve battery life?

2. Getting back to camp efficiently - can devices create an automatic efficient route from the current location back to camp (assuming I dropped a pin there). i.e. fastest route, not necessarily shortest as the crow flies

3. Planning on a computer to mark pins - what's the recommended software these days that will sync things I've planned/marked on the PC back to the GPS device? Or is manually by co-ordinates?

Many thanks!