MAC, Windows & Plotter

[swisscraft]

Hi Everybody,

Did a lot of search but I’m actually not getting a clue what to do: Here are the facts:

- We are planning a cruise from Miami to the Caribbean, then Panama, Pacific and Australia.
- I have a Mac Book Pro
- My Wife uses Windows 7 (64bit)
- On board is a Raymarine Plotter/Radar which uses C-Map NT+ Maps
- Electronic Navigation is new to us

I need now to decide how to Navigate and have the following concerns:
- I need a SW which runs one both systems to have redundancies, but I would not like to spend a fortune. So far I found the following

- MaxSea, expensive but you get two licences – looks like you get really big map coverage for an reasonable price
- C-Map for the plotters seems quiet expensive
- OpenCN seems a bit difficult (I hate computers) and would like to relay on more easy stuff (assuming that "ready" SW is more easy)
- MacENC means I need to buy the SW twice (as well for PC) not even sure if I change the cards from PC to Mac and vis versa
- GPSNavX Mac only
- PolarView has ridicules map prices outside the US

Any idea what is the best/price sensitive way to go? Feedback is highly appreciated.

Cheers Marco

[brak]

I wish this was true. PolarView has *no* map prices whatsoever, unfortunately.

Seriously, I know what you mean - can't help with this.

[GPSNavX]

The Navionics gold charts purchased and downloaded from X-Traverse can be installed on two systems. Mac (MacENC) or PC (Fugawi). MacENC can be installed on as many Macs as you have.

[swisscraft]

Originally Posted by brak

I wish this was true. PolarView has *no* map prices whatsoever, unfortunately.

Seriously, I know what you mean - can't help with this.

Sorry maybe I was unclear - I checked the map prices for each software and to me it looks as the maps which I need for PolarView are expensive if I need a decent coverage.

Marco

[ActiveCaptain]

MaxSea Time Zero includes 3 licenses. Chart region pricing might be lower than you think but I can't list any prices here.

You can easily run MaxSea on the Mac with Boot Camp. I do it all the time. So you could have a complete duplicate of everything on the Mac and Windows and use them both at the same time.

I would think that you should be only considering a PC navigation application like MaxSea so it can run on both types of hardware or PolarView that has native Mac and Windows licenses.

[Patient]

Originally Posted by ActiveCaptain

MaxSea Time Zero includes 3 licenses. Chart region pricing might be lower than you think but I can't list any prices here.

You can easily run MaxSea on the Mac with Boot Camp. I do it all the time. So you could have a complete duplicate of everything on the Mac and Windows and use them both at the same time.

I would think that you should be only considering a PC navigation application like MaxSea so it can run on both types of hardware or PolarView that has native Mac and Windows licenses.

This!

With VMWare Fusion you can actually use your Boot Camp partition while running OS X. Its all native, so its not actually "Emulating" windows so to speak, it is actually using your physical Windows partition. With that setup you could run the best of both worlds without booting back and forth. That way you could use Windows Only nav software while still on your mac side of things.

I personally used MacENC with a "BU" style USB-GPS puck and it worked great in the West Indies. I used VMWare to run my PC only stuff at the same time, such as KML parsing. All of this on a 2009 Macbook Unibody by the way. I think I used VMWare with my debian partition as well a few times trying to grab a few NOAA images to no avail, but was nice to do so without having reboot back and forth.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by Patient

With VMWare Fusion you can actually use your Boot Camp partition while running OS X.

While you can run various PC navigation software that way, it's not something that you'll want to do. There is a big performance hit at least on the major PC products (MaxSea, Coastal Explorer, Nobeltec) - we're pretty major dealers for them and I've used them all under Parallels/VMWare.

There are also some incompatibilities - some dialogs just don't work right under these Windows emulation utilities and some features might have problems. Running under Boot Camp allows everything to work perfectly and runs at full speed. After running something like MaxSea Time Zero under Parallels to try it, you'd never do it again.

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by ActiveCaptain

Running under Boot Camp allows everything to work perfectly and runs at full speed. After running something like MaxSea Time Zero under Parallels to try it, you'd never do it again.

Interesting, is this on the latest Apple hardware? I've noticed no degradation in OpenCPN on WinXP running in Parallels.

But then again, that's probably not a fair comparison. MaxSea TZ is a hefty piece of software, it runs pretty slow on Furuno's MFDs which are WinCE.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by DotDun

Interesting, is this on the latest Apple hardware? I've noticed no degradation in OpenCPN on WinXP running in Parallels

Yeah, 2 GHz, MacBook Pro.

MaxSea Time Zero has a whole different performance level than OpenCPN in general. MSTZ uses the GPU and is quite involved. I think the emulation has a problem with it.

Coastal Explorer seems to slow down a bit too though. I'm not completely sure what they do for performance - although I'm 95% sure they're not using GPU code.

[Mark Zarley]

Marco, I know this may seem old style, but due to your off the grid plan, would consider paper charts as primary, computors as secondary. Use the electronics but always let the paper have your back, be your wingman so to speak.

[waeshael]

I have sailed many thousands of sea miles using Macs for GPS navigation, and Satellite communications interface.
For the next series of trips I have put several Macs on board. For Navigation I prefer to run NavimaQ OS9 version which actually runs on 8.4 - Classic on 10.4.11. Version 3.0.4 is great as it will open any chart BSB, Maptech etc. whereas the newer Nav programs can't open the old Maptech charts. I have purchased hundreds of charts over the years covering the Atlantic, Caribbean etc, including IMRAY/IOLAIRE charts and they all open properly in NavimaQ 3.0.4. The OSX Version is 3.5.3 (4) and although it is a fine program, it will not open the Maptech charts.
If you buy an older powerbook (I use a G3 PDQ Pbook, but even 1400C will work - all can be bought for a few hundred dollars in US), then it has both a serial port to connect to GPS and a PC card slot to hold the charts on a CF card - I use an 8GB CF card for all my charts. This way you can move the charts from Mac to Mac (on the G3 powerbooks and G4 powerbooks with.
It's a good idea to have a backup. The Mac runs off 12V using an auto adapter from Kensington. The older Macs use less power than the newer. The GPS interface is just a Mac serial cable with two wires used to connect to the GARMIN Magellan or other (I use Furuno also). I have the details somewhere that I can forward to you.

You can also hook up a TV display remotely and look at the charts on a weatherproofed TV (the Mac has a TV port setting to send the images to a TV).

The NavimaQ program is a joy to use. The waypoint files and log files are in ordinary text so they can be exported to your personal logbook.

After more than ten years of using this software from version 2 through 3.5.3, I have never had a problem.

The software can be copied from computer to computer. You can run version 3.0.4 in classic at the same time as version 3.5.3 on OSX (pre-Leopard) which is helpful to look at a destination chart at the same time as a crossing chart.

Now where can you get it?

I imagine there are still some copies around on the internet. Well worth searching for. Otherwise contact BARCOSOFT to find a source. barco.help@barcosoft.com

I also use the Powerbook as a satellite terminal for the KVH sat system so that I can send e-mails and receive NOAA weather charts by mail (these are the same charts that are available on SSB). The KVH sat system is a bit expensive to buy, but I can download all the charts I need (10/day) for about $20 a day at sea. (My wife wanted to call Mama while we were in the ocean, and since she had never sailed before, I thought it prudent to get the KVH - today there are cheaper voice communication systems - but I have to get the real NOAA weather charts also - not GRIB files which are only computer generated images with no weather forecaster involved in the preparation of them.

On board I have a powerbook G3, two 17" G4 Pbooks, a Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard, and two G3 ibooks - one that runs OS9 natively and the other OSX and classic both of which have backup copies of all charts.

This combination of hardware and software is very affordable and very reliable for use at sea. The oldest powerbook has been on board for 12 years, and everyone of them still functions properly.

For a look at the boat go to waeshael.com and click on the "sailing" link.

Hope this helps.

[GPSNavX]

According to the Barcosoft website, Navimaq is no longer being developed..

http://community.barcosoft.com/modul...article&sid=29

Apple has ended support for Rosetta PowerPC emulation with OS X 10.7 (Lion). Apple has not produced a PowerPC Mac in over 5 years.

[waeshael]

Thanks, I will have a look at GPSNavX to see if it can display all 800 digital charts that I own.
I wonder if your program will run on powerPC Macs. There are many of them in the hands of serious cruisers.

[Jenia]

You might want to take a look at NavPak. It is a Windows program, but some say it runs with no speed degradation on a Mac using WINE, a Windows emulator. It will read your C-Map NT+ chips using a c-map card reader plugged into the PC, but the card reader may not work on the Mac. It also reads numerous other chart formats, including the old Maptech PCX tile charts.

[Jenia]

Sorry, my bobo; I think WINE is for Linux; I meant a Windows partition on a Mac.