I agree that dedicated chart plotters are even more impossible to get repaired, and you need PCs (or Apples) onboard anyway for so many other things that you might as well have two or three and use them for charting too. My point being, that it is far better to have backups and ones that are as universal as possible so that no matter where you are in the world you can probably get them fixed or buy parts, and that means a generic PC. Yes, I agree it is possible to find Apple repair folks, but they are still much less common, repairs tend to be much more expensive, and because the majority of fellow cruisers use PCs you have advice and help within any harbor, anywhere. Besides, I'm really liking open source software, and you don't need a fancy computer to run most of it. I owned Apples for many years, and I still use them at work all the time, but I have found them to be more likely to break down both on land and on the water. The final straw for me was when something happened to my last iBook that not even the Apple gurus at the Apple store could tell me what the problem was. Their suggestion was to swap out parts that were about half the price of a new laptop and see if it did anything to cure the problem. Instead I bought a cheap Toshiba, which has now served me well for six years, including many years of continuous use onboard.