GPS Software

[rpoint16]

I currently have a Garmin Oregon 300 hand held touchscreen GPS. No bluewater charts yet & uses a micro SD card. It is my first GPS & had a few month learning curve with it for hiking, off-roading, skiing, etc... pretty awesome. I have used it for tracking & messing around sailing in SD bay as well as with beach cats in the Bahamas. I am new to sailing & have not needed any electronic navigation as of yet. I will be doing some casual costal cruising (BVI, Bahamas) probably next year for a week at a time. I know most of the charters have GPS on board, however I believe in redundency. I am buying a laptop today (Toshiba Intel core i7, 4GC mem, 500GB HD). I have googled & read somewhat on GPS recievers for laptops.

I have three questions:
1) Is there a better Laptop GPS reciever for sailing?
2) Is there bluewater type sotware that accompanies recievers or is it sold separately?
3)Is there any software compatable with my Garmin Oregon 300 (micro SD) and laptop software?

Any feed back on past experiences &/or links would be appreciated.

[Ziggy]

Originally Posted by rpoint16

1) Is there a better Laptop GPS reciever for sailing?

Any receiver with NMEA 0183 interface will do. Your Oregon 300 has an NMEA0183 interface.

2) Is there bluewater type sotware that accompanies recievers or is it sold separately?

Check out OpenCPN. It is open source software that will display nautical charts on the laptop and the vessel position from the GPS.

3)Is there any software compatable with my Garmin Oregon 300 (micro SD) and laptop software?

See above.

[Lancerbye]

I just bought a Garmin 18x OEM usb reciever. Just a small hockey puck type that plugs into the usb. I have tried it with a few different Chartplotter softwares. It works with Open Cpn but not with Seaclear. The software has to be able to recognize the USB ports as inputs.