On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:35:29 -0500, Jack Erbes wrote:

Matt O'Toole wrote:

I had enough problems with previous versions of Nobletec to make me say
"enough is enough." The show-stopper was, the program would freeze
occasionally, completely freezing the computer. After shutdown and
rebooting, Nobletec would not run unless it was completely removed and
reinstalled. This happened about once a week.

It's a shame, because otherwise it was a pretty nice program. If only
they bothered to work out the bugs...

Matt O.

I don't have a boat or use a navigation software full time but I've
twice loaded the trial version of Rose Point's Coastal Navigator and I
really liked that software. It is very easy to master in use and does a
very good job with the NOAA free charting, both vector and raster. It
is worth taking a look at.

I had a couple of experiences with other people's installs of it it was
troublesome to say the least. On one, we spent most of the time using
my Garmin handheld to cover the lapses in the primary navigation system
and making sure it was on track and doing good.

In the meantime, SeaClear II is arguably the best freeware navigation
software in the world, a truly generous donation to the public domain.

I've used all the major brands -- Nobletec, Maptech, The Cap'n, and one or
two others, and several versions of each. The owner of the boat I sail on
was Maptech customer #3 (mid-80s), and is always looking for the latest,
easiest setup. Of all this software, the easiest to use, most
useful, and most reliable has been Maptech 1.0 for DOS. We still have it
and use it occasionally, when our current setup is acting up. (Now we use
Pocket Navigator on an iPaq.)

I've been tempted to write reviews of all this stuff, but I've never
gotten around to it. Since we've started using Pocket Navigator, which
we've been pretty happy with, a lot of the other brands have improved
their software a lot, plus new things have come out. So I'm not really up
to speed on what's come out in the last 3-4 years. I'd like to try some
of the new stuff, but we're happy with what we're using now.

Back to Nobletec, every other user I know has had problems similar
to mine. That's a bunch of folks -- at one point Nobletec had about 50%
market share. To be fair, all the other programs have glitches that
are as annoying as Nobletec's bugs.

I'd really like to see nav software written for something other than
Windows -- Linux, MacOS, etc.

Matt O.