For some time I've had a Nokia LD-3W bluetooth GPS receiver (WAAS-
corrected, 20 channel receiver and very sensitive) that was paired with
my Nokia N800 Linux tablets to run their various great mapping programs.

This past week, I acquired a new Samsung NC-10 Windows XP netbook, the
little 2 pound, 10.1" widescreen netbook.

The little netbook is fully Bluetooth enabled. I've paired it with my
Motorola ROKR Z6m sellphone's data service, Motorola S9 bluetooth stereo
headset, the Bluetooth functions of my N800 Linux tablets.

Tonight I got curious as to how the Nokia LD-3W bluetooth GPS would
react to a pairing with Win XP (SP3), so had the netbook search for BT
devices and it found the GPS right away. To my amazement, it didn't
"pair" with this little "puck" of a pocket GPS receiver like everything
else has. It created COM9 and used Bluetooth Serial Port protocol,
instead.

I went to the net to download a better serial port monitor than
Windows' crappy Hyperterm. I found SerialMon from www.serialmon.com for
free. Glad I installed it because it has a filter for NMEA 0183 I'm
sure I'll find also useful when I'm troubleshooting NMEA data on
friends' boats.

I booted the tiny GPS and set it in my window to give it some RF access
to the birds, then told the computer to connect to its bluetooth serial
port, a simply click under My Bluetooth Places. When I set the serial
monitor to COM9, it autodetected the serial speed and started reading
out NMEA0183 data, immediately.

I had some road nav software from my old laptop and installed it on the
new. Once told the data was on COM9, the software is up and running
great.

I'm sure any serial port NAV software for your boat would also work
great with this tiny, wireless GPS. The GPS uses a Li-Ion sellphone
battery and you simply plug a Nokia sellphone charger (AC or DC) from
Walmart into its tiny DC port to recharge it and operate it from a power
source. It comes with an AC charger but DC power cords are readily
available and cheap.

This combination would sure make a great nav station system for a small
sailboat that doesn't have room for a big computer or power to run it.
The laptop's 5.2AH 6-cell battery will power it continuously for about
5-8 hours, unlike the old laptops that ran 1 if you were lucky. That's
only a drain of 1-2 AH off the house batteries from one of those 75 watt
AC inverters to power its AC power supply because it uses 19VDC and
doesn't come with a DC power cable. The tiniest inverter would run both
the little GPS' AC supply and the netbook for days without recharging a
house battery.....

The GPS statements coming out of it a
$GPRMC
$GPGGA
$GPGSA
$GPGSV
$GPGSV
$GPGSV

The three GPGSV outputs per second have different numbers. The
beginning of each of them starts 3,1,11 3,2,11 3,3,11 so this
sentence must be in 3 parts as it's very long.

I'm going to have to go sailing to try it out....(c;]
Any excuse will do......