geocoding from uk postcode, some issues I have been working on with Location Module

Hi,

I have a real estate website on drupal 6 using the Location module to collect the postcode, and use the UK database to store the lat/long to the node, and that works pretty well.

However I have had a couple of issues, which are that I am finding it difficult to make changes to the form that collects the Location on the new node form, and secondly I have a database of full postcodes (eg XX1 YY2) rather than the just the postal areas (eg XX1) given by the default Location postcode databases for the UK which I would like to make use of.

Obviously being able to display the nodes on a google map is a cool feature of Location/gmap modules.

I was wondering whether I could achieve the same thing with geocode/geo and some other modules, that would allow me better customisability of the input form, ie I like the function to geocode from any given field, but I have had no luck in getting it to geocode a text field that takes the postcode, and there is no good tutorials on those modules like Location, that I have found so far.

So I guess my question is, if you wanted to;
1) collect postcodes
2) geocode them to lat/long
3) search on proximity in a view
4) display the nodes on a google/openlayers map
5) customise the input form to take housenumber/postcode only

which set of modules would you use?

ps I am having problems getting the geo view configuration to take a form argument to search on, it only seems to take a hardcoded value???

Thanks
Tom