Chartplotter on a laptop questions

[atur]

I would like to buy a laptop and use chartplotting software on it. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have several conditions for this:

1. The laptop must have a fairly long charge from battery, as I do not want to plug it in as my sailing sessions are fairly short just now
2. The GPS unit must be USB compatible (not serial or NMEA)
3. I would prefer chartplotter data on a USB as opposed to CD

Has anyone here found a solution with similar conditions?

 

[AngusMcDoon]

I would like to buy a laptop and use chartplotting software on it. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have several conditions for this:

1. The laptop must have a fairly long charge from battery, as I do not want to plug it in as my sailing sessions are fairly short just now
2. The GPS unit must be USB compatible (not serial or NMEA)
3. I would prefer chartplotter data on a USB as opposed to CD

Has anyone here found a solution with similar conditions?

Netbook gives battery life of 6-9 hours if you get one with a good battery life.

GPS dongle from Maplin for £15, or was it £20?

All the world's charts in vector format will fit on a 2GB USB stick.

 

[edsailing]

Maplin dongle can be difficult to set up, most garmin handhelds will do the trick if they have a GPS lead.

Use OpenCPN as a nav program

 

[EugeneR]

Second choice:

Netbook with solid state hard disk (lower power usage, can survive a lot more than normal hard disks)
Memory Map software with UK charts for £40
Cheap but common USB GPS (if it comes with magnet in the base, remove it if you want to use it near the boat compass)

First choice:

PDA with built-in GPS running Pocket Navigator (included with Memory Map) and same maps. PDA must have touch-screen and some form of joystick / scroller device to enable scrolling/panning the chart and placing routes / waypoints at the same time e.g. O2 Orbit I. This assumes you're asking for a laptop because you're looking for low power consumption and portability, rather than using other applications on it as well.

 

[atur]

Thanks for the comments.

I would prefer a laptop to a PDA. I have considered using a solid-state laptop. Has anyone else tried this? What kind of laptop is suitable for this?

 

[Vara]

I would like to buy a laptop and use chartplotting software on it. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have several conditions for this:

1. The laptop must have a fairly long charge from battery, as I do not want to plug it in as my sailing sessions are fairly short just now
2. The GPS unit must be USB compatible (not serial or NMEA)
3. I would prefer chartplotter data on a USB as opposed to CD

Has anyone here found a solution with similar conditions?

My primitive Advent 4213 net book which has a "normal" battery life of 3hrs will easily last a couple of days of chart plotting if set to max battery in power management, means that I have to kick it back into life when I want to use it but as it only takes a few seconds it's no hardship.

The only problem is that on internal battery the netbook goes into halfpower mode which means that the processing speed is reduced, so slow chart scroll.
If it's a problem I can overide and return to full power.

I use a Maplins GPS dongle and had no probs setting it up. (it was literally plug and play).

I use the Imray digital charts with the associated chart plotter, which does everything I need it to.

Imray apparently now sell their charts on a USB stick (mine came on DVD).

So in a nut shell I would have thought that any decent netbook with UBS dongle and Imray IDC would match your requirements.

 

[Huttoft]

"Belfield Software Ltd" sell charting software suitable for use in a laptop which includes all 800+ Admiralty raster charts of the British Isles, all for £70. The setup I bought had charts updated to the first week in April and I think the next updates are about due now. (New updated charts every quarter) Software comes on a DVD.