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I'm in the market to purchase a GPS for tracking and visualizing data. I understand that most GPS maintain a tracklog file that contains lat long and other data that can be downloaded to a PC. Through the use of third party software this data can then be plotted to show points and/or lines of travel. Is each record in the tracklog a point (or node) that then requires software to interpolate the 'arcs' in between?
I would like to be able to create my own geographic trackfiles (probably in shapefile or geodb format) and I would like them to be polylines (or arcs) rather than a series of points. MxGPS looks like it converts tracklog data to shapefiles, but it's unclear (from the website) whether it creates a polyline shapefile or a point shapefile.
I'm a GIS Cartographer by profession, so I'm comfortable with the GIS technology, but fuzzy on the GPS side of things and learning.
Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

yes, the tracks are a series of points. Its like a trail of breadcrumbs. The frequency varies between manufacturers and settings on the GPSr. many programs can probably convert them to arcs.