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For ENC support I only have seen one program better than Fugawi. Nobeltec is at best acceptable but the rest frankly suck. These days any one in the US should demand ENC support or walk. It ought to look first rate too and support all the features. If it has "layer options" then they missed the boat. It's a lame design that you can't deal with in the real world. Fugawi does it right in that respect. You set youir depth zones and few other things and it knows the rest.
The one I really liked was a commercial shipping version of a product from Korea. The Korean Military use it and several commercial companies. They won't sell you a copy and I only got a beta from them that wasn't all finished.
The new Fugawi 4.0 adds a few things. AIS for one but I'm not spending that kind of money for an AIS receiver. If I sailed the English Channel - maybe. I do sail Norfolk harbor often enough. Radar helps. Fugawi does not do radar overlay - that could be a nice thing but not without a serious price tag.
Fugawi sure does do autopilot output but it's NMEA. You can set up a COM port for out that should write NEMA output for the course being naviagted. Many applications does do OUT. I expect to hook that up later this year. It's in version 3 if that is what you have now.
OK it does not do great circle calculations, but you can convert them to way points. It's not that hard to compute. Were you to sail a course that required it you would need to factor a whole lot of asspects to it than a simple great circle calculation.
They added Microsoft Mobility 5.0 support this last 4.0.12 update. franlky that is the new standard. PocketPC is dead. 2003 was and is the last version. I have an iPaq running Pocket PC for it and it is a bit limited but then so is the ipaq.
It does not do Raymarine out and for a lot of folks it's a deal breaker and for those folks you need to go else where and settle. You may not find a cheap product but there are some. As a general rul I never let the system drive the boat. I'll lock a course and leave it but that is as auto pilot as I go. My main reason to hook it up is for the display ability of more than 30 way points. My GPS won't store more than 30 and I rely on that ouput for routes. Fugawi will deal with unlimited routes and eay points so it would eliminate the need to upload to the GPS.
Fuhawi way point editing has it's problems. You can drag the points but you can't insert in the middle of a route. It easy to make them so I don't find it that hard, but it could be better. I often just display the last route and make a second over the top then delete the first one. I've been meaning to write my own insert function but have not been motivated enough.
For the money you have to spend at least $500 to compare it. At $200 with ENC support it's the best deal going. I think in the end a lot of fancy features don't play too well on the water. Too many things to think and worry about. If you can work with NMEA in / out then this is the sure ticket at a great price.
I've been through most all the "free" aplications. Most are hideously poor and / or hard to use. It's not that they can't work but they do so in a terrible manner or exceptionally limited.
All the other Low cost low feature aplications I've played with don't do enough to make them worth using. Sometimes a paper map is just easier too.
If I were to choose again I would go for Nobeltec Admral. I write software for a living and did a lot of GIS mapping software some years back BUT, at $1100 I sure like Fugawi a lot more. I won't spend that much. I love gadgets and high tech stuff but unless I laso had the money for radar overlay and all the other bells and whistles I would go that far.
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