New Laptop for Christmas?

[Cornishman]

I hear that some makes of the latest laptops with Windows XP and no serial ports are not working well with cell phones or charting software. The trouble seems to lie with the serial port to USB adapters.
Anybody had any experience?

 

[stevebirch2002]

Hi

I have had problems with the lack of serial port with chart software but the USB/Serial adapters usually fix the problem. With XP you need the latest drivers for the dongles etc. Using Seapro with XP is perfect if you download the latest XP driver from the manufacturer, Hope this helps

Albin Vega "Southern Comfort" V1703

 

[Cornishman]

Thanks for that. My info is that Toshiba laptops are particularly vulnerable. Frank Singleton is going to publish a full report on his email page soon.

 

[qsiv]

I develop software using the Seapro engine, and have certainly had problems with two Toshibas over the past three years. The two Dell's (and Sony) that I now use have all worked faultlessly. FWIW, I know that Dell is a favoured machine inside Euronav!

Do take care over the standby/hibernation settings when charting - the dongle drivers dont appear to recover cleanly after a powrsave, and the software invariably crashes inelegantly. I use the PcCard (PCMCIA) dongle, and the parallel / USB dongles may behave differently.

 

[stevebirch2002]

Hi
Been using SeaPro for the last eight years now as a beta test site. Only problem I had was with a Toshiba, everything else seems to work. The Toshiba problem turned out to be cured by teh latest driver from the dongle (parallel) manufacturer when using XP. Every problem I have evr found has always been cured by Brian, he seems to know what is what!

Albin Vega "Southern Comfort" V1703

 

[stubate]

My HP with usb/serial works fine with the garmin 12 and oziexplorer

 

[franksingleton]

I am no expert on these matters. However, I have had some comments re USB ports, mobile phones and plotters. These are on my site at www.franksingleton.clara.net/email.html


Frank

 

[ThomasHome]

The old serial and parallel ports will be extinct fairly soon as manufactures moce over to more reliable and faster ways of transfering data to and from our PC's, such as USB and Firewire. So I guess the software people will introduce new hardware and updates in the near future.