First, you can't blame Raymarine for the fact that they are introducing technology that has been around for 20 years. EVERY manufacturer is doing that - whether it's Raymarine, Garmin, Furuno, Simrad, etc. TackTick was innovative as they were the first major manufacturer to add wireless, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Raymarine does with them.

Second, sailboaters are just one small segment of an instrument manufacturers market. We don't care about updating depth 60 times a second vs. 20 times a second, but a power vessel running at 30kts does. Not every feature they release are ones we care about, and not every feature they release are ones that powerboaters or commercial vessels care about.

I know a 1/2 dozen cruisers that Raymarine was bad to. I also know 1/2 dozen cruisers that Garmin, Simrad, Furuno, Cruisair, Seafrost, ICOM, yada yada have been bad to. And I know a lot of cruisers that have had good experiences. However, people are MUCH more vocal about talking about the bad vs. extolling the good, and Raymarine has a large market share so there will be more people complaining about them than other manufacturers. I believe they have a 10% lead on the next largest group (in the US) - Garmin.

I've had personally good experiences with them. When we had our X10 autopilot fail (we got one of the first 100 units shipped) while in the Bahamas, I happened to be heading back to the US. I called up Raymarine, they asked a few questions. I carried the unit back to the US, stopped at the local Raymarine dealer where Raymarine had shipped a whole NEW unit to and exchanged them. It was simple. That's one of my good experiences.

Anyway, off the pulpit now