iPod Touch ?

[Magoofskie]

Ok. Thnks SVAuspicious. Very interesting.

[olson34]

Originally Posted by SVAuspicious

Not true. Assisted GPS uses a preliminary navigation solution based on the nearest cell tower(s) as a seed to the full-blown GPS chip in the device. That means a more-or-less useful location solution within seconds. Shortly thereafter the GPS position will show up. Well offshore the GPS will eventually (many seconds or at worst in my experience a minute or so) lock on without the assist and provide a location.

I regularly use Charts & Tides on my iPhone 4 hundreds of miles offshore. The GPS works fine.

The bigger issue is that the cell phone part of the phone uses a lot of power in a "No Service" state trying to get connected. If you turn on airplane mode you disable the GPS. Pain.

Still it's been useful. I've had a delivery or two on which we lost nav from onboard instruments and used my phone to finish. *grin*

Thanks Much!
I'm still not certain of whether I should buy a new MacBook or an iPad, but real-world experience from users is vital and valuable. Then, there is a sort of "plan b" where we get an iPod Touch and put one of the several plug-in gps antennas on it.

L