On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:48:18 -0800, "Steve" wrote:

FUGAWI, but you have to respect people who name their product after a
bad joke.



I appreciate all of your comments Wiley, but please expand on the above
'snipe'..

Steve
s/v Good Intentions

Steve -

I see you already have the answer. I didn't mean that as a snipe; I
truly like the attitude it shows. A slightly different version of the
joke refers to the Fukarya tribe.

Another poster recommended Maptech. I like it, but I doubt that
anyone who has a beef with the resource requirements of CAPN will like
Maptech much better. I was never satisfied with it till I upgraded to
an 850 mhz cpu with 256MB. The official recommendation of "Pentium
class cpu and 64MB" is absurd. Nice functionality though. It's what
I run when I want to use the photos and topo maps from their
chartkits. The configurability of Offshore Navigator is superb. The
current version seems reliable enough, though I had a lot of trouble
with older versions. You can use any charts you like, as long as
MapTech made them.

As for OziExplorer support, I doubt that you could find many people to
complain about it. The author has an excellent record of fixing user
problems and adding requested features. Also, there is an excellent
Ozi mailist on Yahoo that generally turns around answers to questions
in a few hours. I licensed the program in 1998 and I really haven't
had any reliability problems since that first year. Also, even with
all the new features that have been added, there has never been an
upgrade fee. Which is not to say the program is perfect. The real
problem with Ozi from my point of view is that it was originally built
for hikers and off-roaders and has grown more by accretion than by
design. The feature set and interface are not ideal from our point of
view.

Given the option, I'd try hard to wait and see how ENC support shakes
out before choosing. I have the feeling that most of the vendors are
trying to figure out how to make those free charts more expensive than
the ones we have now.

If I planned on going places where BSB chart coverage is spotty or
insanely expensive (and I do), Ozi or Fugawi would be aboard
regardless of what else I was using.
__________________________________________________ __________
Glen "Wiley" Wilson usenet1 SPAMNIX at worldwidewiley dot com
To reply, lose the capitals and do the obvious.

Take a look at cpRepeater, my NMEA data integrator, repeater, and
logger at http://www.worldwidewiley.com/