Free PC Navigation Software - OpenCpn

[jwcolby54]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

I just bought a Toshiba Click2 pro with solid state drive. I came with Windows 8 (hate it!).

I feel your pain. I bought a toshiba laptop just after Windows 8 came out and tried for 3 months to use it. I ended up wiping it and going back to Windows 7. Which was a PITA because I had to manually find and load drivers because the manufacturers stopped designing (or making easily available) the drivers for Windows 7.

I am NOT a technophobe. I have been in tech all my life, built my own computers from chips with a soldering iron, used CPM, then DOS, then Windows of all levels. My job to this day is writing software for Windows machines using C# and SQL Server.

Windows 8 was a show stopper. Totally foreign, unable to window apps that had always windowed. It used the entire damned 24" screen for the calculator for crying out loud. A CALCULATOR with buttons the size of my shoe. Who thought THAT was a good idea?

It required searching through dozens of icons representing crap I just didn't care about, had NEVER used in my entire computing life, and would never want to use, crap constantly updating the screen and grabbing my attention (I have ADD). Constantly yanking me back to that stupid screen full of flashing thingies constantly updating, and page after page after page of huge icons to represent each individual program (that I had never used and was never going to use) stored somewhere on the computer.

You name it, it sucked.

I feel your pain.

From what I can tell Windows 10 is Windows 8 with a new (bigger, better) NAME. So waiting for Windows 10 is NOT going to make it any easier.

That said, Windows 7 has already reached end of life, and will reach end of support in the near future. So we have no viable choice other than suck it up.

So no, just dive into the insanity and try to figure it out. When Windows 10 rolls around, you will be somewhat ahead on using that new version of Windows 8.

[Celestialsailor]

It's amazing...everyone I talk to says the same. Id MS that out of touch with their consumers? Maybe there is a parallel world that loves it.

[jwcolby54]

There is a parallel world that loves it, folks who started on it, and in particular folks who started on tablets and moved to it. If you have never used windowed apps, i.e. a windowed notepad and a windowed calculator and a windowed Excel spreadsheet and a windowed browser, all simultaneously visible on a large monitor...

If you have never experienced that then you have no frame of reference. Tablets don't (easily or often) do windows. Every app is full screen. So if you come from there, then a "full screen every thing" windows seems normal.

OTOH if you are accustomed to having Excel open and Word open and dragging and dropping ranges of cells into a document and then sending that to thunderbird... well... the new windows feels like a KGB prison.

And MS has relented and now allows windowing pretty much everything. The "new start menu" is awful, full of pretty (and huge, and useless) icons but hey, it is better than no menu.

But this thread is not the place to discuss the suckage known as Windows 8 (soon to be 10)...

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by jwcolby54

But this thread is not the place to discuss the suckage known as Windows 8 (soon to be 10)...

True...but my question still stands..."Should I wait for Windows 10 before continuing the insanity"?

[jwcolby54]

And AFAICT Windows 10 is Windows 8 in a new dress so if you will not gain much by waiting.

I just happened to download and install OpenCPN on my Windows 7 dev machine today, plus all of the charts for the US. I have to go buy a GPS puck since I cannot lay my hands on the one I have.

I don't have the experience of trying to run it on Windows 8 however.

I am facing the same question. I will be buying a new machine just for this purpose. Maybe one of those cool "all in one" machines which bury the computer in the monitor - probably 23" or so. It WILL come with Windows 8 and going backwards to Windows 7 is a non-starter so I will be feeling your pain directly all too soon.

My bigger question is

1) What the processing and graphics horsepower requirements for this.
2) Is multi-point touch useful for this app?
3) How many USB ports will ultimately be needed?
4) What other apps / pieces / parts are easily integrated?

I am currently running it on a 32" Samsung TV hi-def as a monitor and having a big screen for the charts is pretty nice. Of course I am just sitting in my apartment doing this, not in a boat. Do most folks run this at the nav station? Or up in the cockpit?

[Celestialsailor]

Wish I could answer your questions. I think any PC you buy nowadays will run OCPN. My Toshiba Click2 has the detachable screen (which is the CPU). This will be good for hanging it vertically under the hard dodger in the cockpit. I chose the Solid State drive for power draw purposes.

[Neptune's Gear]

PC's
OpenCPn will run on almost any PC, from an atom processor up. It works on 1GB of RAM, but 2+ is better! If you use radar, AIS etc etc then more is better!
I use and sell a Windows 7 12v Mini PC with solid state drives that draws 10w (without monitor on). Check your monitor power requirements, they vary a lot.
Used to use an I3 based Laptop, with an Acer Netbook as a backup, both Windows 7. I have not tried it on Windows 8 yet, but many have - look in the OCPN support forum. 8.1 is better, no idea yet on Windows 10. Linux is what OCPN was originally developed (still is!) on, so that's a definite option if thats your preference.

Other platforms.
Mac - fully supported
Andriod - currently in Beta
Rasberry Pi - also still Beta I think, but I've had no experience of this version.
:-)

[Celestialsailor]

Yes...8.1 is what my Toshiba Solid State has.

[nebeluk]

Originally Posted by bvimatelot

I've been using Open Cpn since it first came out and its taken me safely everywhere round the world from the Caribbean to and through the Med, across the Indian Ocean, all up and down the US Eastern Seaboard and down to the River Plate. With a gps and, latterly, an ais receiver I couldn't be happier!

One point - I don't use "beta" versions, rathwer preferring to be on the cutting edge as opposed to the bleeding edge..... Tony

Hi, I noticed that you passed through the Med. I was just wondering where you found the charts to work with OCpn? Unlike the US charts over here are not free:-(
Thanks
Nebeluk

[bvimatelot]

Nebeluk - I use CM 93 ver 2. I have world-wide coverage with pretty good definition everywhere at all scales. Its difficult to find nowadays but worth googling it. Don't do Ver 3 - it is encrypted and will not work on Open CPN. Cheers, Tony

[bvimatelot]

I have a large Gateway laptop at home with Win 7. Its brilliant!! My sea-going computer is an Acer Netbook(? - or whatever they're called nowadays) unfortunately loaded with that abortion called Win 8.1. It sucks!! I fully expect Win 10 to suck even more.... Why didn't they just stop at XP? All the bugs had been worked out of it, it did what you told it to and was pretty user-friendly.....oh well, that's "progress", I suppose....Tony

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by bvimatelot

more.... Why didn't they just stop at XP? All the bugs had been worked out of it, it did what you told it to and was pretty user-friendly.....oh well, that's "progress", I suppose....Tony

Yup...all they had to do is make XP with a touch screen option and a separate operating system for phones and tablets. It tells me that they are too big to have a real understanding of the majority of the public's needs.

[nebeluk]

Originally Posted by bvimatelot

Nebeluk - I use CM 93 ver 2. I have world-wide coverage with pretty good definition everywhere at all scales. Its difficult to find nowadays but worth googling it. Don't do Ver 3 - it is encrypted and will not work on Open CPN. Cheers, Tony

Thanks for that Tony, I will get my googling fingers going
Neville

[petter5]

Originally Posted by jwcolby54

I have a dell laptop but it is my work machine, so I would be buying a new laptop for the purpose. Which leads to the question, what kind of demands does OpenCPN put on a laptop? I have read the specs for OpenCPN and it seems to say that it will limit caching to 1 gb RAM, but what about threading, and also graphics horsepower?

Any laptop will do just great. An old thinkpad T42 with 2 gig of ram under Linux will run Opencpn perfectly - any newer will do " overkill" just fine,,,

If you have space and powersupply for laptop in the cockpit, choose one with a decent display. the old T42 has a 1400x1050 display that work excelent for opencpn - you will get one for less than $100 on ebay.

[jwcolby54]

I was playing with OpenCPN last night and on my pretty powerful dell development laptop (with SSD) the performance moving from map to map was not great.

To be fair I do not really know what I am doing yet but just trying to change from one map to another scanning up and down the coast, it could take 20-30 seconds before it decided to load the next map.

Worse, it will only load a single area, leaving adjacent squares blank.

I probably need to spend copious time playing to learn how things work.