Does This Actually Work ?

[Cheechako]

Does this datastik actually work as a gps receiver with your laptop? as a plotter? not for world travel but for local sailing would it?
TURN YOUR LAPTOP INTO A COMPLETE GPS CHART PLOTTER AND MORE | eBay

[denverd0n]

It's just a USB connected GPS receiver, and some freely available software. $80 is a grossly over-inflated price for a GPS and some free software!

I bought a USB GPS device for about $20 dollars, installed OpenCPN on my laptop, downloaded some charts from NOAA, and voila! My laptop was magically turned into "a complete GPS chart plotter and more" (for 1/4th the price).

Search for threads on using your PC or laptop as a chart plotter.

But, yeah, it will probably work. Mainly, it will work really well at lightening your wallet, if it has been feeling too heavy lately.

[Cruiser2B]

Same here, USB GPS receiver and OPENcpn! works great!

[Dulcesuenos]

I had purchased a different type of GPS usb recvr from the same individual, it was around $50. for everything, the way he has the software put together makes it very easy to use if your not really computer savy.Its nice that all the data is on a stick and not 2 or 3 cd's

[captainKJ]

works very good on a mac running google earth. get a birds eye view at the same time. I have never tried to run google earth and openvnc at the same time but if you set your notebook to run another monitor and leave the desktop as one large one instead of mirroring it,, it might just work. in other words 1 large desktop split between 2 monitors