Eastern,

Hay, great info and a good description of a lot of info. I have not used CE myself. I took a copy of Fugawi with us when we departed in 04. I also had another software package that I never even opened up. I liked the Fugawi a lot, but I have not kept updating it.

I guess I am the type who does need or necessarily want to have every bell and whistle. I want a good charting program that works with my charts (raster, vector, F57, CM93 etc), displays my course, distance, speed and maybe eta, and will display AIS, tides and currents. Much past that is mostly waisted on me. And, once we departed south of the border, the free chart downloads from the NOAA didn't help as they do not cover our areas, at least not yet (if ever).

For power consumption reasons, I use a small chart plotter and do not normally use the PC. For me, it's just a backup system to have aboard. So, to spend $$$ for a wizz-bang system is not warranted. AND, in my case my computer is actually a 3ed system. Like I said, I use a small chart plotter, then any time I will be out of sight of land, I use my Yeoman chart plotter with actual paper charts with MY plotting points on them. So, OpenCPN is great for my class of user. By the way, the newest update is looking a lot better than the original, or even the last version.

Greg

By the way, I also use Open Office and a number of other open source programs. I like putting money in the pocket of the actual programmers.;)