PDA

[Jeff_Spedding]

I have been using a B/W Palm for my work for some time on which, with a Nokia mobile and IR connection, I can send and receive e-mails, send (not get) faxes, look in Internet (waste of time on such a PDA!) see all my contact addresses etc., play chess etc. etc. I have since loaded a tide program and the SailPalm software with a Poole to Dover chart and using a Navtec GPS clip-on for the Palm. I have spent a couple of days since "working" from my Shrimper in the Solent and on a run up from Poole. Apart from the sound of water against the hull and rigging noise, my colleagues would never know! And it all fits in a plastic "freezer-bag" safely in my pocket.

Looking forward to the PDA article and to next summer.

 

[kingfisher]

I use a Palm Vx with TideTool for tidal calculations.

Group of people on the pontoon: skipper is the one with the toolbox.
http://sirocco31.tripod.com

 

[Jeff_Spedding]

My PDA is also a Palm Vx with Tide Tool. I quite fancy the iPac thingy in colour but the price would pay for my mooring for 6 months. The GPS clip-on unit is a Navman which was selling very cheap in Austria as a street navigation add-on.

 

[BrendanS]

This looks quite neat. Not released yet, a Garmin PDA running Palm OS, with integrated GPS and voice directions

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.garmin.co.uk/products/iQue3600/>http://www.garmin.co.uk/products/iQue3600/</A>

more useful around town than on the boat, but a nice toy nevertheless /forums/images/icons/wink.gif

 

[Grehan]

Palm

Jeff
I also use tide info program on my Palm m500 (which I use in more conventional ways extensively and it's a jolly good little thing).
But . .
Looking at the SailPalm demo, the "charts" are necessarily pretty diagrammatic aren't they? Not sure I'd want to navigate round the Bramble using it . . . How truly useful a 'charting' tool do you actually find it? (even taking into account its relatively low cost).

 

[Jeff_Spedding]

Re: Palm

Grehan.
Yes you are quite right. The SailPalm charting is very low definition. I would never buy a Palm system to navigate. As I had one anyway, I loaded the software I suppose to be "one up" on colleagues with Palms! I tend to use it for checking distances from points I am sailing to, or to create a "marker" for a sandbank where we have just caught a couple of flounders!. I use the tide tool when I am working away to see if the tide would be suitable for a weekend trip home to go boating.