Quite simply Coastal Explorer (www.rosepointnav.com) folks rule, the
rest drool. [grin]

I've used Cap'n (see the archived messages from the old Baba-L for some
interesting demonstrations of "dealer shoots self in foot") and VNS (AKA
Nobeltec) (spent, literally, over a year trying to get a problem that
lead to VNS crashing on two different boats - different boat, different
GPS, different laptop, different, different, different... and third boat
came back from the Bahamas, ready to toss VNS). I've played with a
couple of others but these two are the name players. Both programs work
(with varying to degrees of reliability) but Cap'n wants you to pay
through the nose to use ENC charts (or use theirs, for a fee) and VNS
isn't helping either. CE uses ENC charts straight from NOAA (lots of
data - forget this from a phone line) and they're free (just point CE at
NOAA, answer the questions, and CE will file everything and clean up
after itself). CE is feature rich, reliable, and does customer
support. The documentation needs some work but you can get it up and
running quickly and just plain playing around with "I wonder how you do
this" will take you a long way.

Cheers,
   Rick

Tdgriffin001@cs.com wrote:

>Ahoy Baba maties!
>
>All this discussion of electronic charts has peaked my interest, especially since I’ve been contemplating replacement of my “old” black and white display chartplotter with a color version and I already have a fairly new laptop PC.
>
>My question concerns experience with the various chart software packages available out there.
>
>The Computer Charting Software Update in the May 2004 edition of Practical Sailor was useful, but I’m interested in comments from you Baba-L folks who have used any of them.
>
>
>



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Received on Mon Dec 05 13:16:42 2005