Hello from Nobeltec

[Nobeltec]

Hello from all of us at Nobeltec!

I figured it was about time that we came out of hiding became actively involved in the community in which our Customers are based. This forum looks to be the most active group of Nobeltec users, people with questions about Nobeltec or electronic navigation in general, all things I'm both personally and professionally very interested in. Being the Manager of our Technical Support and Quality Assurance departments, I'm interested in both how people are using our and our competitor's products, what issues get the most "attention", and what changes I need to "run up the chain". Obviously all that being said, this forum is not designed to be used as a replacement for Nobeltec Technical Support. If you have an issue that needs addressing, please contact us directly (outside of this forum), we'd be glad to help.

Most importantly I'm here to try and assist using my knowledge of what I know (and undoubtedly learn a lot in the process) and not sell our products. I'm a firm believer that our products will sell themselves if they are what people are looking for and are of outstanding quality, two areas we've admittedly been lacking in the past few years while "under other management". Now that we have new management, who are much more interested and excited about the marine industry as a whole, I am equally as excited.

I'm glad to be part of this community and hope to become as active as possible.

Joel

[Hud3]

Hello, Joel.

Welcome to Cruisers Forum, and thanks for noting your understanding our position on "commercialism" here on the forum. Your technical expertise and product knowledge will no doubt be very helpful here. We look forward to your participation. Glad to have you with us!

[sded]

Welcome, Joel. Nice to see Nobeltec participation. When will you be re-opening the Nobeltec Technical Support Forum? You can participate in lots of related threads here and elsewhere, but it is shocking that a company with a user base the size of Nobeltec does not have its own support forum.

[Nobeltec]

Thanks for the warm welcome Hud. I look forward to becoming as involved as I can (I do have a day job after all :-), but I also look forward to learning from all you smart people. Seems like lots of great, free knowledge here ripe for the taking.

[Nobeltec]

Thanks for he welcome sded. Revamping our website is high on our list of priorities, including a new forum, self help area, knowledge base, etc. Trust me when I say I push for it regularly. One thing I have to keep reminding myself and others is that we have been through lots of turmoil in the past year, so much so that my head is still spinning from it. While I'd like to pretend that changing ownership, physically moving our office, hiring staff, all while working on fixing/improving that product thing that we do all just happens, let me tell you, it is a stressful process involving many long hours. I think it's awesome that we're still around, still working on some exciting things to come, but there's only so much a company can do when faced with the inordinate amount of "noise" caused by such a total upheaval as we went through.

I don't feel sorry for us, and certainly I don't make excuses. I think your suggestion is a great one, I want you to know that it is I've had for some time now and look forward to when we can launch that kind of support.

Regards

[St. Elsewhere]

Joel,

Thanks for your participation.

Also, I have recently learned that I was in error when I said that VNS 10 prevented me from using my VNS 9 Passport raster charts. I think that what I was missing after loading VNS 10 was access to my old Maptech raster charts. Nobeltec has advised that VNS 10 will run all raster charts that are BSB version 4 or higher. Mine are about as old as Maptech which may be older than BSB altogether, let alone version 4.

In any case, I will stick with Nobeltec as long as things continue to go in the positive direction. It is certainly good to hear about improved policies from management folks inside Nobeltec. The tech support guys have always been very helpful in solving issues, but not in a position to say where things are going with the product.

[Nobeltec]

The whole handling of Raster charts in general was a huge misstep in my opinion by the former leadership of Nobeltec, something we have just remedied in the latest version by removing the dependency of having to call and get a unlock code just to view Raster charts. Supporting very old versions of data is a difficult task, especially when talking about testing multiple apps across various operating systems, at some point we have to cut it off.

Thanks for the support, hope I can help in the future.

[colemj]

What about the US S57 vector charts? I ran away from Nobeltec when I innocently installed a "bug-fix upgrade" of version 9 that not only removed the ability to use these charts, but removed these charts ENTIRELY from my computer WITHOUT TELLING ME. When I complained, I got an earful of disdain from the manager of the product (whose name I would provide if I felt it worth my time to look up old emails) who told me it was for my own safety that they removed the ability to use US government charts and that the company had every right to remove features from the program during innocent updates without telling the customer and further more they had the right to reach into my computer without telling me and erase data that was not their IP for my own safety.

Hello Coastal Explorer, and I will tell you that is a fantastic program - way better than VNS, more intuitive and much, much less buggy. It wasn't an easy decision - I had been with Nobeltec since version 5 in the 90's (before it was Nobeltec) and upgraded through the years to VNS 9, but I am so happy to be treated like a valued customer with CE now instead of a piece of dirt like I was with Nobeltec.

Good luck Joel. I haven't paid any attention to Nobeltec since 2008, so didn't know it was under new management. However, you have your work cut out convincing those of us who jumped ship to fork out another $400-500 in the hopes of not being abused again. Especially since the competition got so good in the meantime and there are numerous free, or almost free, software programs for simple charting and routing.

{EDIT} I am adding after posting that I realize Joel is Tech Support and I wanted to say that I had good interactions with Nobeltec Tech Support and even had sympathetic ears there when I complained about some of the product decisions and bad customer care.

Mark

[Nobeltec]

Mark, as much as I would love to give you a response that might help get inside the heads of our former management, I cant, I am simply not the right person. I didn't join this forum to play PR rep or attempt to excuse away all of the past decisions, whether I agreed with them or not, of a management that in all honesty never understood our business or our Customers.

I'm actually glad you like CE. That's arguably the right app for a number of people. We get along well with the RP folks, they're a nice group of people.

We will prove ourselves again and plan on providing more than just "simple charting and routing software", even dare I say something that is innovative beyond what is currently within the realm of marine navigation and electronics. We plan to become more involved and in-touch with our Customers and market (hopefully the fact that we are joining this and other forums is evidence of that). We value your and everyone's feedback, especially when it comes to making our products better. Let's face it, we don't build, support or maintain the software we provide for us, it's for you. Maybe someday we'll even win you back Mark. In the mean time feel free to look us up at the next boat show we're at and I'll at least buy you a beer for your trouble.

Regards

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha and welcome aboard!
Hope you enjoy some of the subjects and can add some information to this great forum.
kind regards,

[Nobeltec]

Thanks for the welcome John! I'm still just getting my feet wet in this forum. There's a lot to take in as it is most definitely one of the most active forums on the WWW. I look forward to getting involved where appropriate and contribute when I am able.

Aloha from the soggy NW!

[aeronautic1]

taptaptap... hello, is this thing on?

why can't I download charts online. I tried to purchase ATL2 and keeps want to ship it to me. Can't I download directly online like you can with Gamin BluCharts?