On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:24:52 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:


What exactly is it you want to know?

I've asked some questions and will have plenty of questions as time
goes by.

BTW, do they have GPS units that talk?

Good question.

Yes they can, but no they don't. How's that for obfuscation?

Allow me to explain. Garmin makes general purpose handheld GPS units
that use audio prompts when you use the Mapsource auto software, but
as far as I know, no with the Bluechart marine software. In other
words, the hardware is there to do it, but the marine software doesn't
support it. As far as I know, and I must confess that I looked into
this a while ago so things may have changed, marine software doesn't
use a speech interface as auto software does.

The reason, as explained to me, is that marine mapping is different
than auto mapping because of how the units are used. Additionally,
marine use is generally different due to other factors like set/drift,
wind, wave and the fact that on open water, you can pretty much go
where you want as long as it's safe.

Now, can you use a chartplotter functions with an audio alarm? Yes.
Will it tell you you are at a waypoint or require some sort of course
correction? Yes. Will it talk to you - not that I know of.

Thanks SWS, you've given me some info to dig into.

--Vic