I have tested every nav software that came down the pike. In the early days (pre Coastal Explorer) Visual Navigation Suite was imo the best.

Coastal Explorer was the first package to have true chart quilting with S57 chart capability and I made the change and never looked back. It was and remains faster, smoother and more user intuitive than VNS and in turn, than any other package I have used.

I have not tried SeaClear, because once CE had S57, a truly intuitive interface and true quilting, I had what I wanted and stopped shopping everything in 2004. At the urging of a friend however, I tested OpenCPN last spring and highly recommended the purchase of CE over OpenCPN.

There truly is several generations of difference between the look and feel of OpenCPN and CE. So much so, that they aren't even in the same league, imo. While there are some truly effective and good open source packages out there for FTP, AVG antiVirus and Open Office, until there is a nav package that matches the look and feel of CE, they are not worth the "free" bit, imo.

When you have to drop a thousand bucks almost any time you turn around on a 40' boat, the cost of a good and properly designed software package is worth a few measly hundred.

And CE is still actively under development. CE2009 was released in January, but the beta program is ongoing and there have been three beta updates in the last three months as they bring new and improved features to the 2009 package.

The latest addition was integration with Atlantic Cruising Club Content, which shows a photograph of all Marinas they cover (east and west coasts) Icons placed on the charts at their location, when clicked display a photograph of the marina with details on controlling depths, services available, navigation quirks to enter, etc.

A huge improvement with the 2009 package was the ability to download updates to both software and charts automatically. This can be done directly if your boat's computer has a web connection or remotely and brought to the boat via a flash drive if the boat is not online.

All of this is still just bells and whistles which enhance the already superior GUI which in itself imo is worth its weight in gold.