After which I will be a very rare occurrence on this forum since it seems to choke for me on marginal internet connections. I also find the SSCA board almost impossible to use without a strong connection (although that one is so dead one can leave it for several months and pick right back up again only a couple new topics away from when you left).

Navionics isn't alone in not allowing any old chart to be used with their application. As I mentioned before, I don't know of a single other maker of navigation software, hardware or provider of charts that do allow this. Furuno, Garmin, Raymarine, Simrad, Coastal Explorer, Fugawi, MacENC, Nobeltec, etc all have restrictions of some sort on this. You also can't play Blueray disks in your standard DVD player, put gasoline in your diesel engine, run iPhoto on your PC, install DOS on a new computer, and the list goes on. OpenCPN actively tries to come as close as possible, but they also rely on people breaking laws to run some charts.

I do hope for more open portability in the future, and vote my wallet the best I can, but am not willing to go so far as to cut off my nose to spite my face.

Single-purpose, focused area charting is always going to be better, and Bauhaus and the Lewis's are perfect examples. But if they attempted to provide world wide coverage, they would also run into the same limitations and incremental improvements as Navionics, CMap, Maptech, NV and the other big name chart providers.

While the governments may not be making a profit from the paper charts (and I suspect many do), the companies you buy them from certainly are. Few charts are bought directly from the governments that made the surveys. Will you be holding these companies to the same standard as you hold Navionics?

We don't have an iPad and are running Navionics on an iTouch, but the application clearly shows which areas have loaded charts, and resolution level is indicated by color shading. Maybe it is different on the iPad, because they are different and separate applications between the two platforms.

Every company of every product in every area says they are the best. Xantrex, Trojan, John Deer, Maui Jim, Rocna, Winchester, Hunter and Lagoon are just examples of thousands of products (like how I got the last four hot buttons in there? Stand back, this thread will open up now...). Surely you are numb to that sort of marketing by now?

If that truly was a Navionics guy, it wouldn't serve him or the company well to get into a pissing match about a specialized complaint, a set mind and a firm stand on personal principals. There is simply no open space there for him to work in.

Mark