I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products people
have used and what they think of them.

Thanks

I think MaxSea is top of the line if you interface the GRIB weather
forecaster with it for serious offshore passages. For coastal and inland
work, it is probably overkill.

Sort of depends too on what you use for charts. If you use C-Map, any of
the chartplotters are all you need (Raymarine, Smirad, Furnuno) I use
Raymarine interfaced with Radar and the Autopilot and it works great. I
don't use the Raymarine software.

Other people are very happy with Nobeltec. Good thing is, you can down load
trial versions of most of this stuff and try it.

Kind of depends on what you are going to do. Long offshore passages would
make the MaxSea package very attractive. Get the OCENS WeatherNet package
to allow you to get weather and winds over the SSB or Sat phone. I assume
you are a sailor.

Phil

"Josh" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products people
have used and what they think of them.

Thanks

On Fri, 6 May 2005 07:16:26 +1200, "Josh"
wrote:

I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products people
have used and what they think of them.

Thanks

I like Ozi Explorer - you can calibrate scanned images as well as
using the "official" BSB format charts.





--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
new newsgroup users info : http://vancouver-webpages.com/nnq
GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter
Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca

Josh,

Look at the Cap'n Voyager Mosaic.

I like it and use it with a Garmin 76.

Ansley Sawyer
SV Pacem

"Phil Lewis" wrote:

I think MaxSea is top of the line if you interface the GRIB weather
forecaster with it for serious offshore passages. For coastal and inland
work, it is probably overkill.

Sort of depends too on what you use for charts. If you use C-Map, any of
the chartplotters are all you need (Raymarine, Smirad, Furnuno) I use
Raymarine interfaced with Radar and the Autopilot and it works great. I
don't use the Raymarine software.

Other people are very happy with Nobeltec. Good thing is, you can down load
trial versions of most of this stuff and try it.

I think the learning curve for these kinds of software is really
steep, and much of it will not carry over into another type of
software. My point is that downloading a version and trying it might
just be confusing.

We can do weather faxes off the SSB, but have never (since we don't
make long passages) really taken advantage of that, and haven't done
it more than once or twice.

We don't have a chart plotter as we skipped right over that type of
equipment, and use Capn on the laptop (attached to a GPS with an
external antenna up the mast) in the cockpit in the ICW. Works
wonderfully well for us, and would not want to be without it. We
always have a backup laptop. (really - sometimes two of them)

The support for Capn has been really good. I don't like Mosaic as
well as the previous versions, but when I got an updated OS (to
Windows XP on one of the extra computers I mentioned), I had to
upgrade. I had Windows 95 to begin with, and then Windows 98 and then
Windows Me, so I actually have 3 versions of Capn.


Kind of depends on what you are going to do. Long offshore passages would
make the MaxSea package very attractive. Get the OCENS WeatherNet package
to allow you to get weather and winds over the SSB or Sat phone. I assume
you are a sailor.

Phil

"Josh" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products people
have used and what they think of them.

Thanks



grandma Rosalie

Josh,
The problem with changing once you have learned one package I have not
found to be great.
If you just want to play with a package start at
http://www.gpsu.co.uk/
load and play with their free package and go from there.
Matt Colie - sig file deleted

Josh wrote:

I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products people
have used and what they think of them.

Thanks

Josh wrote:

I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products
people have used and what they think of them.

I've used all the popular ones except Maxsea -- Maptech, Nobletec, The Cap'n,
and a couple of others I can't remember.

By far the best is still the original Maptech for DOS! Sadly, we can't get
charts for it anymore.

My favorite at the moment is Maptech *Pocket* Navigator, running on an iPaq PDA
with a Navman GPS. The PDA is so much easier to use for so many reasons, it's
well worth the extra money.

My second favorite would be Nobletec. It's generally better designed, with
better usability, than the cluttered, complicated Maptech programs (not Pocket
Navigator though). But don't run it on Windows 98 like I do (many people's
"boat computer" is an old, slow laptop) -- it crashes, then you have to reload
everything to get it to work again. It's fine on 2000 Pro or XP. The only
thing I don't like about Nobletec is you can't resize the boat icon to make it
more visible when you're zoomed out.

The Cap'n is fine too, just simpler with fewer features -- not a bad thing.
It's probably the easiest to learn, and the cheapest too. There was some silly
thing I wanted that it didn't do, which is why I don't use it. I can't remember
what that was though!

Maptech's programs have the most features, but they're cluttered and confusing.
This is made worse by being slow, even on fast computers with gigs of RAM. They
hang up and cause drive swapping, etc., when you don't expect it. So they're
frustrating to use. Again, this is not true of Pocket Navigator on a PDA.

A casual poll of the boaters we meet suggests Nobletec is the all-around
favorite. I think Nobletec has the biggest marketshare too.

I'd really like to try some of the newer programs which use the new vector
charts.

I also think a tablet PC running Pocket Navigator would be brilliant -- like a
dedicated chart plotter, at a small fraction of the cost.

Matt O.

Check out OziExplorer at WWW.Oziexplorer.com . Use it with your MapTech
charts. The price is right being shareware at less than $100 for a license.
I have been quite satisfied with it. There is even APIs for those so
inclined.

HTH

Vic

--
__________________________________________________ ______

Victor Fraenckel - The Windman
victorf ATSIGN windreader DOTcom
KC2GUI