[ActiveCaptain]

...I've heard It gets flaky and dog slow once you start racking up lots of routes/waypoints/tracks or start overlaying extra data from GRIB/AIS/Radar etc & the bathymetric sampling of vector data for 3D and grabbing of your own sounder data for 3d is prone to error as well

A lot of your posting was like this - "I've heard...". There's some value in that type of info but everyone needs to remember that it's not necessarily valid. At least in the US courts, hearsay isn't considered evidence. It's a shame to trash an entire new product line because of what you might have heard from others.

The product I'm using was released 2 weeks ago. Maybe it's different from what you're hearing about. I suspect it is. I can say directly that I haven't gotten it to crash with every overlay I've been able to throw at it. I've used the free weather integration along with 3D, multiple displays (vector and raster at the same time), tide and current markers all over the screen, and 3D overlays with satellite imagery merged into the land portion - a very cool feature. In this merging mode, the water in the chart display gives soundings, etc and the land is merged with satellite imagery to see marinas, land features, etc. It is stunning.

The bottom line is that I haven't been able to make it crash while trying hard to make it do something out of the ordinary.

opening multiple chart windows of the same chart at differening pulls it down as well, especially if you are mixing rasters and vectors

Not really. And I'm using a $399 computer. Have you actually done this with the latest version of TZ? I have.

as far as I'm aware the version of TZ furuno are flogging in the UK requires a hardware dongle

Might be true. I don't know. Charts for the UK require payment of a royalty to UKHO so maybe they require it. I know first hand that no hardware dongle at all is needed for any of the US data. I also know that the latest data can be downloaded from MaxSea directly providing the latest charts from them.

I've installed it on a mac under parallels and it runs fine.

Now THAT is good info. But I don't understand why there is all of that other "I've heard" references. Have you been able to crash it? Are you using the same software that I am? What is the name and version of the product you installed under Parallels?

Panning zooming speed is hardly an issue IMHO. When your cruising along at say 8 or 10knots, how often are you actually going to be fiddling with a plotter, zooming in and out panning around charts and the like

The exact same thing was said when quilting came out - it's not that big of a deal to switch charts - who needs it? It's now the standard on any real chartplotting software. Even our web site does it by quilting and seamlessly displaying charts (although it's an early expression it certainly shows how it can be done).

Having instant panning and zooming changes the way you create routes. It makes it much nicer when you are exploring a different area because there is no "penalty" for zooming out, moving around, and zooming in. With a wheeled mouse, it's a very natural way of using the display - way different than anything else I've ever used for any type of mapping, not just boating. It reminds me of GoogleEarth sped up 100 times. Sure, who needs faster panning when you're moving at 6-8 knots. But try creating a route quickly when moving and you'll instantly see the huge advantage.

Funny, but in all of my years of being involved with marine navigation, I've never heard someone say, "that display manipulation is too fast". Instead, the frustrations have usually been that the updating is too slow. No one would ever say that of TZ. Of course, you have to be using the same current version that I'm using and that Defender is selling. I have a feeling the actual software being compared here is different.

I've shown the software to a bunch of people at the marina we're at. All of them agreed that it represents a new level of user-interface and capability. People can try to make excuses about how the new capabilities aren't really needed - until they try them for real. Then they'll realize that it's a whole new ballgame. And after all, isn't that what we expect from software developers? Shouldn't we want them experimenting and coming up with ways to make our use better? It's human nature to defend what you've previously purchased. I understand that. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use an older product. I do that myself in many ways. But I'd rather look at new ideas and be able to evaluate them honestly instead of just shooting them down because I don't have them. That's just silly.