PC Navigation stuff...very confused

[poter]

Been on Land a long time now earning some dosh, now off for a new adventure in Shady... Yipee, She has been in Viareggio for to long, time to get going.

So decided to invest in a good PC based Nav system, been around the web and now seriously looking at SOB (yes I know) SOB is "Software on board" from
http://www.digiboat.com/ looks like the business. Anyone used this system I would be interested in your thoughts.

Anyway thats not the confusion.... It accepts C-Map from Jeppesen....great! so I go to Jeppesen, wow a boeing company - OK good site nice and easy to navigate and choose your map, which in my case is South West Med. all great so far..

HA.. now go and try and buy one, in my case I nearly always use MES in Bristol - good prices and a bunch of guys who know what they are talking about, but can I find the charts I want? No...

Loads of SD cards and cartridges but not specific... very confused.

OK a quick call today to MES will probably sort it, they also have SOB software, so not a problem.

But am I a dinosaur or is this whole subject just a minefield?

Poter.

 

[Ric]

As soon as I saw "PC" and "Jeppesen" in one sentence I concluded that yes, unfortunately you are a dinosaur..sorry!

I have to deal with Jeppesen for aviation products for work, and I have never known a first-world company that are so difficult and complicated to deal with, or buy products from. I admit I haven't used their marine products - but my experience dealing with their aviation division is so poor I am not minded to try their marine division.

As for using whirry, noisy, amps-guzzling PC on board - I don't know where to begin! I only use PCs because I am obliged to for work. I switched to Apple for all my personal computing a few years ago and they are much more reliable and pleasant to use.

I sail in SW Med and do all my navigation using a combination of Navionics charts and a couple of grib programs on an iPad, and a Raymarine chart plotter. I can't see a need for anything more complicated than that.

Others will differ...

 

[poter]

Well... thanks for the confirmation..LOL.

The only item I would strongly disagree with is your statement on Apples...even my son, a research Bio Chemist, wants to come in from the "Dark Side" as the latest offering from Windows 8 is as good as anything that apple has to offer & of course you can get a much superior spec'd machine for half the price... no competition.

The big point to getting a PC based Nav. rather than a dedicated on board Plotter, was to be able to do planning, as I will be on 2 weeks on 2 weeks of scenario from next month, and passage planning will be critical.

 

[GHA]

Mailspeed have the charts, ain't cheap, are they!

http://www.mailspeedmarine.com/electronic-charts-navigational-software/c-map/nt-wide-charts63.bhtml

Opencpn is excellent free software but at the moment they're still working on a system to purchase s63 charts, no hint of costs yet.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f134/s-63-plug-in-for-opencpn-112672.html
But really good piece of software if you can find some charts.

Google came up with these....
http://1yachtua.com/nauticalcharts/nautical_charts_west/chart_GM01.aspSeems to good to be true for that cost, and 1950 data, can that really be the year? But you never know, anyone tried them?

 

[lustyd]

of course you can get a much superior spec'd machine for half the price... no competition.

.

A coach has a superior spec engine compared to my car but it's nowhere near as fast. Performance on electronics has little to do with the numbers and those using mainly numbers to sell should be treated with caution. My iPad has a sufficiently fast CPU and enough memory to do everything I need in a timely fashion. It also weighs a fraction of the Surface so I actually carry it with me for when I need it. Not trying to be pro Apple here, just pointing out the factors you may be ignoring.

 

[poter]

Oooo
Nope still don't get it, sorry, I used a apple Mac for 5 years went back to PC last year and have just upgraded to an I7 Tosh which is blazingly fast and as I say half the price of the equivalent Mac.

I am sure that the arguments will go on but at last IMHO with win 8 even MS are getting the interface right. I only use excel, word and email, so why on earth would I pay 1500 to 2000 for a Mac??

There are some fast coaches around as well and if you divide the carrying capacity to that of a car I think you will find that like for like it is faster!

 

[blenkinsop]

Another vote for OpenCPN. Free and straightforward to use.

 

[Vallich]

I'm not meaning to be pedantic but when you say PC do you mean laptop, you wouldn't have an actual PC on board would you? I have a couple of laptops at home (and an iPad as it happens), one running Windows which is quite slow compared to my other much older laptop with Linux Ubunto - might be worth considering installing Linux, OPENCPN etc.

 

[lustyd]

Oooo
Nope still don't get it, sorry, I used a apple Mac for 5 years went back to PC last year and have just upgraded to an I7 Tosh which is blazingly fast and as I say half the price of the equivalent Mac.

I am sure that the arguments will go on but at last IMHO with win 8 even MS are getting the interface right. I only use excel, word and email, so why on earth would I pay 1500 to 2000 for a Mac??

There are some fast coaches around as well and if you divide the carrying capacity to that of a car I think you will find that like for like it is faster!

Well you certainly do seem obsessed with the numbers, so here's another one. My battery lasts for a minimum of 12 hours on my MacBook Pro while actively working. I no longer have to carry a power supply with me around London as a result. I agree that Windows is a better OS but the hardware Apple make is truly excellent and I think worth the money. You also miss the fact that although my laptop cost £1300 new, it will still be worth quite a bit in three years time while your Tosh will be worth peanuts so overall I suspect mine will end up costing me less money

You say you only use Word, Excel and email so I'm confused why you see the need for an i7 when an i3 would be overkill for your usage and no slower, your apps are single threaded, so the extra cores of the i7 will literally be doing nothing.
As I said I didn't want to turn this into that old debate, I was just pointing out some realities when doing comparisons. If bigger numbers on the box are your thing then fair enough, but I have a whole list of stuff which comes first once I reach a point where the machine is fast enough.

 

[poter]

Oh dear.....I am going to eat my words, im afraid...

It looks like I will get the Ipad Air along with iNav x and the charts from Fugawi....

That means I get Chart plotting software and an Ipad.......
Its been an interesting exercise and this solution looks to be the best, both from the fact that I can use the Ipad for planning off the yacht and at a reasonable cost.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[lustyd]

Oh dear.....I am going to eat my words, im afraid...

It looks like I will get the Ipad Air along with iNav x and the charts from Fugawi....

That means I get Chart plotting software and an Ipad.......
Its been an interesting exercise and this solution looks to be the best, both from the fact that I can use the Ipad for planning off the yacht and at a reasonable cost.

Thoughts anyone?

Make sure you get the cellular version as it has the GPS chip lacking in the wifi only version. The iPad is a good solution but less flexible than a laptop so connecting it up to other things is harder (VHF radio for instance). Lots of people seem to get along well with the considerably cheaper Nexus tablets too if money is a consideration.

When you have the 3G, get a t-mobile PAYG SIM which for £20 top up every 6 months gives you sufficient internet access for email and web browsing for the 6 months. Obviously you can't stream video for that money but it's nice to have email and ybw.com on the boat

 

[ganter]

Oh dear.....I am going to eat my words, im afraid...

It looks like I will get the Ipad Air along with iNav x and the charts from Fugawi....

That means I get Chart plotting software and an Ipad.......
Its been an interesting exercise and this solution looks to be the best, both from the fact that I can use the Ipad for planning off the yacht and at a reasonable cost.

Thoughts anyone?

Don't eat those words just yet...

The solution you've come with there is probably the best you'll get within either IOS or Mac OS environments - I've been researching this for ages trying to come up with something.
BUT, my findings are that any of the windows programs or Android based apps and charts are vastly superior to anything within Apple family.

I'm basically waiting for my MacBook Pro to die and then returning to Windows at which point I'll go Android too and get Open cpn and the rest.

 

[lustyd]

Don't eat those words just yet...

The solution you've come with there is probably the best you'll get within either IOS or Mac OS environments - I've been researching this for ages trying to come up with something.
BUT, my findings are that any of the windows programs or Android based apps and charts are vastly superior to anything within Apple family.

I'm basically waiting for my MacBook Pro to die and then returning to Windows at which point I'll go Android too and get Open cpn and the rest.

In what way are they vastly superior? No good just saying something is better and leaving us to guess at these advantages! Also, why wait for the MBP hardware to die, just install Windows on it!

 

[poter]

Don't eat those words just yet...

The solution you've come with there is probably the best you'll get within either IOS or Mac OS environments - I've been researching this for ages trying to come up with something.
BUT, my findings are that any of the windows programs or Android based apps and charts are vastly superior to anything within Apple family.

I'm basically waiting for my MacBook Pro to die and then returning to Windows at which point I'll go Android too and get Open cpn and the rest.

Open Cpn OK but which charts would you use?

 

[Kelpie]

Depending on your view on these things, charts compatible with OpenCPN are widely available as a free download.

By the way, could I put OpenCPN onto my iPad?

 

[Richard10002]

Oh dear.....I am going to eat my words, im afraid...

It looks like I will get the Ipad Air along with iNav x and the charts from Fugawi....

That means I get Chart plotting software and an Ipad.......
Its been an interesting exercise and this solution looks to be the best, both from the fact that I can use the Ipad for planning off the yacht and at a reasonable cost.

Thoughts anyone?

How are you going to waterproof it so you can use it for pilotage at the helm?

In 2006, I had a Lowrance plotter fitted at the wheel, but removable, and power able by a 12V source anywhere in the world. I think it cost about £300 or so at the time. The alternative seemed to be the Standard Horizon models.

It was invaluable getting into The Scillys, Baiona, and a variety of other rocky and tidal places. It would have been useless down below.

 

[Tranona]

Oh dear.....I am going to eat my words, im afraid...

It looks like I will get the Ipad Air along with iNav x and the charts from Fugawi....

That means I get Chart plotting software and an Ipad.......
Its been an interesting exercise and this solution looks to be the best, both from the fact that I can use the Ipad for planning off the yacht and at a reasonable cost.

Thoughts anyone?

Suggest you read this month's YM before you waste any money on an Ipad for navigation. Feature article on the subject.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

Suggest you read this month's YM before you waste any money on an Ipad for navigation. Feature article on the subject.

Despite the conclusion in the article I thought it did a pretty good job of showing just how suitable the iPad is. The only problem that didn't have a ready made solution was the brightness at night.

 

[GHA]

Oh dear.....I am going to eat my words, im afraid...

It looks like I will get the Ipad Air along with iNav x and the charts from Fugawi....

That means I get Chart plotting software and an Ipad.......
Its been an interesting exercise and this solution looks to be the best, both from the fact that I can use the Ipad for planning off the yacht and at a reasonable cost.

Thoughts anyone?

Any tablet is probably a major benefit of a cruising boat, I went for a waterproof sony xperia and have hardly turn on the laptop on the boat since, with a bluetooth keyboard it's capable of most tasks, yet to try navionics in anger but seems very capable so far. Massive power savings over a laptop. No idea what I pads are like for software but, ore than enough on Android with lots of it free or cheap, all the equipment manuals are on there now (Dropbox so available from anywhere ) plus an old smartphone as a wifi hotspot for easy Web access.
Tablets are great
Just a pity Opencpn hasn't made it yet.

 

[PaulMcC]

Any tablet is probably a major benefit of a cruising boat, I went for a waterproof sony xperia and have hardly turn on the laptop on the boat since, with a bluetooth keyboard it's capable of most tasks, yet to try navionics in anger but seems very capable so far. Massive power savings over a laptop. No idea what I pads are like for software but, ore than enough on Android with lots of it free or cheap, all the equipment manuals are on there now (Dropbox so available from anywhere ) plus an old smartphone as a wifi hotspot for easy Web access.
Tablets are great
Just a pity Opencpn hasn't made it yet.

I also use my Sony Xperia tablet and it's great. I just need to come up with a sensible way to mount it outside. Got given one of the portable battery packs for recharging mobile phones as a Christmas present and that removed my only concern (that the tablet couldn't do a full day as a chart plotter without being plugged in). Definitely very happy.