"Vic Fraenckel" wrote in message
...
Doug,

I just had a look at the ShipModul site and read the info concerning both
the VirtualPlex-1 software and the MiniPlex-41USB. Both sounded VERY
interesting. Could you tell me if purchasing the MiniPlex-41USB includes
the
VirtualPlex-1 S/W? Is the S/W usable without the hardware? Lots of people
seem to be having trouble simply attaching a GPS receiver to their laptops
because they have no serial ports anymore. It seems to me that the
VirtualPlex-1 SW solves that problem as well.

Any enlightenment will be appreciated.

Hello Vic,

I am the manufacturer of both poducts. The VirtualPlex-1 software is not
included in the purchase of a MiniPlex-41USB. VirtualPlex-1 is usable
without the hardware, it can be used with any source of NMEA data. But
VirtualPlex-1 does not solve the problem you describe.

The MiniPlex-41USB connects four NMEA sources to a computer that lacks a
serial port. When you only have to connect a single GPS, it is a bit of
overkill since a simple USB-serial converter could be used for this purpose.
However, many of these converters do not work very well or create the famous
wild-mousepointer problem. This does not occur when you use a
MiniPlex-41USB, because the supplied driver blocks any Plug&Play requests
coming from Windows.

VirtualPlex-1 could be described as the software antipode of a multiplexer.
It reads the data from one single serial port, beit a real one or a virtual
one, and dispatches it to up to 255 virtual serial ports that are created by
VirtualPlex-1. This enables multiple software applications to run at the
same time and use the incoming NMEA data. Also, VirtualPlex-1 allows the
applications to talk back to the 'real' serial port in order to send out
NMEA data.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Meindert
www.shipmodul.com