December 21, 2009 20:42
There seems to be a huge amount of misinformation out there regarding Maxsea TZ, on this forum and others.
Just to clarify some points:
- Through a Furuno dealer it's $346USD for the Navigator edition, including full AIS support and weather overlays world-wide (which are very impressive).
- All editions of Maxsea TZ will display information from NMEA instruments. Depth, speed, AIS targets, wind, etc etc. There's a whole selection of nice digital/analogue gauges. The entire UI is completely flexible. (I'm not sure if N2K is supported, because I don't have any N2K gear to test.)
- The recent 1.8.1 upgrade supports Windows 7 32bit and 64bit editions.
- There's no hardware dongles required for any version of Maxsea Time Zero. There's a serial number and online activation, the same method Adobe and others use.
- The US retail package includes the software DVD and 5 cartography DVDs. NOAA raster, Navionics vectors, satellite imagery, and 3d land/bathymetric are all included for the US coastlines.
- Additional cartography by region (and free satellite imagery) is downloaded directly from Maxsea/Mapmedia. Only the unlock code needs to be purchased from a Furuno dealer. Be sure to buy from the US (Defender), unless you want to pay more than double the price through a foreign dealer for the same code.
This is unrelated to Maxsea TZ, but concerns the difference between 32bit and 64bit versions of windows:
I decided to run Windows 7 32bit even though I have 4GB of system memory. I applied a hack that unlocks the ability of 32bit Windows to use up to 64gb system memory. The memory restrictions in 32bit versions of windows are purely licensing based, not a hardware or real software limitation.
The legality of modyfying the OS in such a way is a questionable, not that I care either way.
The Mac Mini is an awesome platform for running this software, and has handled it all very well so far. I highly recommend the Mini.
Just to clarify some points:
- Through a Furuno dealer it's $346USD for the Navigator edition, including full AIS support and weather overlays world-wide (which are very impressive).
- All editions of Maxsea TZ will display information from NMEA instruments. Depth, speed, AIS targets, wind, etc etc. There's a whole selection of nice digital/analogue gauges. The entire UI is completely flexible. (I'm not sure if N2K is supported, because I don't have any N2K gear to test.)
- The recent 1.8.1 upgrade supports Windows 7 32bit and 64bit editions.
- There's no hardware dongles required for any version of Maxsea Time Zero. There's a serial number and online activation, the same method Adobe and others use.
- The US retail package includes the software DVD and 5 cartography DVDs. NOAA raster, Navionics vectors, satellite imagery, and 3d land/bathymetric are all included for the US coastlines.
- Additional cartography by region (and free satellite imagery) is downloaded directly from Maxsea/Mapmedia. Only the unlock code needs to be purchased from a Furuno dealer. Be sure to buy from the US (Defender), unless you want to pay more than double the price through a foreign dealer for the same code.
This is unrelated to Maxsea TZ, but concerns the difference between 32bit and 64bit versions of windows:
I decided to run Windows 7 32bit even though I have 4GB of system memory. I applied a hack that unlocks the ability of 32bit Windows to use up to 64gb system memory. The memory restrictions in 32bit versions of windows are purely licensing based, not a hardware or real software limitation.
The legality of modyfying the OS in such a way is a questionable, not that I care either way.
The Mac Mini is an awesome platform for running this software, and has handled it all very well so far. I highly recommend the Mini.