April 1, 2008 09:50
Sort of know where you are coming from gorge, the temptations to pirated software are huge, albeit attached to the huge millstone know as micro$oft windoze
maybe too late to suggest this if you've bought one already, but if its a handheld you want, forget garmin altogether and go for a magellan, older ones with very basic mapping (GPSMAP 315) seem to only fetch a few quid on ebay, and the more modern ones like the meridian series don't go for much more. the meridian having the advantage of you being able to upload charts to it and it is very good all in one hand held chartplotter
NMEA support is excellent, and most software I've ever dabbled with has been far less problematic when you tell it the the gps is magellan as opposed to garmin.
currently I've got a magellan meridian platinum as a handheld back up and cannot fault it at all - its even waterproof and floats!
maybe too late to suggest this if you've bought one already, but if its a handheld you want, forget garmin altogether and go for a magellan, older ones with very basic mapping (GPSMAP 315) seem to only fetch a few quid on ebay, and the more modern ones like the meridian series don't go for much more. the meridian having the advantage of you being able to upload charts to it and it is very good all in one hand held chartplotter
NMEA support is excellent, and most software I've ever dabbled with has been far less problematic when you tell it the the gps is magellan as opposed to garmin.
currently I've got a magellan meridian platinum as a handheld back up and cannot fault it at all - its even waterproof and floats!