How do you log calories burned w/ a basic HRM

I see a lot of talk on these boards about how great heart rate monitors are and how it's the best way to get a read on how many calories you burn with working out. I've been feeling like I should get on the ball, so I'm doing my research. The choices are overwhelming! I've read a few different articles about how the calorie counts on HRM are an educated guess. Something about how to get a accurate read, the machine would have to take in account how much oxygen in coming in. The only HRM that seem to have this type (or close to it) technology are upwards of $400.
Since most HRM are just giving a guess, I thought maybe it wasn't worth spending the extra money on a $100 Polar since the one feature (calories burned) I want is just a good guess.

So, I thought I'd just get a plain ol' heart rate monitor and eventually upgrade to something fancier once I had a better understand of which features I want. With that comes my main question: how do I log my exercise? If my heart rate is in a certain zone for a certain amount of time, is there a way to calculate calories burned?
I don't really understand how I would benefit from having a plain HRM if I won't be logging my exercise any differently?
And I don't really understand how I would benefit from a HRM that showed me calories burned if it's all just an educated guess...I mean, myfitnesspal does that already.

Between inaccurate readings, chest straps (that I have to get wet before working out? Seriously?) and constantly having to toy with it, readjusting the settings every time you drop a little weight....I guess I'm at a loss as to why I even wanted one in the first place. Everyone seems to be going crazy for these things though, so I feel like I must be missing something. Help me understand?

I see a lot of talk on these boards about how great heart rate monitors are and how it's the best way to get a read on how many calories you burn with working out. I've been feeling like I should get on the ball, so I'm doing my research. The choices are overwhelming! I've read a few different articles about how the calorie counts on HRM are an educated guess. Something about how to get a accurate read, the machine would have to take in account how much oxygen in coming in. The only HRM that seem to have this type (or close to it) technology are upwards of $400.
Since most HRM are just giving a guess, I thought maybe it wasn't worth spending the extra money on a $100 Polar since the one feature (calories burned) I want is just a good guess.

So, I thought I'd just get a plain ol' heart rate monitor and eventually upgrade to something fancier once I had a better understand of which features I want. With that comes my main question: how do I log my exercise? If my heart rate is in a certain zone for a certain amount of time, is there a way to calculate calories burned?
I don't really understand how I would benefit from having a plain HRM if I won't be logging my exercise any differently?
And I don't really understand how I would benefit from a HRM that showed me calories burned if it's all just an educated guess...I mean, myfitnesspal does that already.

Between inaccurate readings, chest straps (that I have to get wet before working out? Seriously?) and constantly having to toy with it, readjusting the settings every time you drop a little weight....I guess I'm at a loss as to why I even wanted one in the first place. Everyone seems to be going crazy for these things though, so I feel like I must be missing something. Help me understand?

If you have your average HR you can enter your info into the following equation for an estimate of calories burned:

Calculate the calories burned if you're female. This is given by the equation calories burned = (0.074 x age in years - 0.05741 x weight in pounds + 0.4472 x average heart rate - 20.4022) x time elapsed / 4.184.

For an example calculation, a 43-year-old female weighing 143 pounds exercised for 45 minutes with an average heart rate during the session of 141 bpm: (0.074 x 43 - 0.05741 x 143 + 0.4472 x 141 - 20.4022) x 45 / 4.184 = 405 calories during your exercise session.

I see a lot of talk on these boards about how great heart rate monitors are and how it's the best way to get a read on how many calories you burn with working out. I've been feeling like I should get on the ball, so I'm doing my research. The choices are overwhelming! I've read a few different articles about how the calorie counts on HRM are an educated guess. Something about how to get a accurate read, the machine would have to take in account how much oxygen in coming in. The only HRM that seem to have this type (or close to it) technology are upwards of $400.
Since most HRM are just giving a guess, I thought maybe it wasn't worth spending the extra money on a $100 Polar since the one feature (calories burned) I want is just a good guess.

So, I thought I'd just get a plain ol' heart rate monitor and eventually upgrade to something fancier once I had a better understand of which features I want. With that comes my main question: how do I log my exercise? If my heart rate is in a certain zone for a certain amount of time, is there a way to calculate calories burned?
I don't really understand how I would benefit from having a plain HRM if I won't be logging my exercise any differently?
And I don't really understand how I would benefit from a HRM that showed me calories burned if it's all just an educated guess...I mean, myfitnesspal does that already.

Between inaccurate readings, chest straps (that I have to get wet before working out? Seriously?) and constantly having to toy with it, readjusting the settings every time you drop a little weight....I guess I'm at a loss as to why I even wanted one in the first place. Everyone seems to be going crazy for these things though, so I feel like I must be missing something. Help me understand?

If you have your average HR you can enter your info into the following equation for an estimate of calories burned:

Calculate the calories burned if you're female. This is given by the equation calories burned = (0.074 x age in years - 0.05741 x weight in pounds + 0.4472 x average heart rate - 20.4022) x time elapsed / 4.184.

For an example calculation, a 43-year-old female weighing 143 pounds exercised for 45 minutes with an average heart rate during the session of 141 bpm: (0.074 x 43 - 0.05741 x 143 + 0.4472 x 141 - 20.4022) x 45 / 4.184 = 405 calories during your exercise session.

I had a polar and now I have the body bug how both give me a read out on calories burn but both include the calories you burn just living which are already calucateled in MPF. So what I did was calculate how many calories i burn a minute just breathing living etc (that number for me is 1.3) I take that number multplie it by the number of minutes i exercise and subtract that number from the total calories burned to get my actual work out burn: For example

MPF says Calories Burned
From Normal Daily Activity 1,770 calories/day so I take 24 (hours in a day) *60 (minutes in an hour) = 1440 then 1770/1440 which equals 1.229 just for ease I round up to 1.3

So now say I work out for 60 minutes and burn 400 calories I take 60*1.3 (cause I worked out for 60 minutes) = 78 that gives me the number of calories i would have burned just sitting around (which is already calculated into mpf) I subtract 78 from 400 = which gives me 322 my actual calorie burn in workout.

Now for picking a regular HRM I agree with a lot of people posted here, you must get one with a chest strap. Body Buggs don't use a chest strap cause it measures in a different way.