Flemming,

I just looked back at your first posting in this thread, and see that you
want to use a laptop to suppliment the chartplotter's features. You will
find many programs that will read a good variety of charts and handle AIS.
You can also use a software "serial port splitter" to send the NMEA data to
multiple programs, so if you can't find one program that does everything you
like, you can run another one simultaneously. As I mentioned, I haven't
done any serious evaluation of the PC programs.

In case you haven't seen me previously rant on the subject of power
consumption, I will suggest that you do a serious energy audit. This is
important if you plan to be away from shore-power for more than a few days
(unless you have a big power boat with lots of excess power-generating
capability). Look at all your gear -- it's power drain and duty-cycle. Be
realistic about your charging sources, and your battery-bank's ability to
ride through periods of cloud-cover (if using solar panels), etc, etc. A
laptop typically uses a lot of power, so try not to be surprised by what it
takes to keep your boat's electrical system running well. I'm not saying
that a laptop is a bad solution (it may very well be your best solution,
depending on what you want to do), but for me, the power drain of a
continuously-running laptop was enough to push me to my current PocketPC /
laptop / chartplotter hybrid system.

Regards,
Paul