For additional help with installation or licensing, Jeppesen Marine provides toll–free phone and email customer support, a searchable online Knowledge Base, a collection of well–organized FAQs and an eNewsletter (see links).

LOOK AND FEEL

Since they are the same base program, Admiral and VNS have the same interface, with the exception of some additional tabs and icons. In fact, the two packages are so similar that Nobeltec only shows Admiral–and not VNS–at boat shows (remember, both VNS and Admiral cannot be installed on the same computer), pointing out the small button and icon differences if the customer is interested in VNS.NOBELTECHThe Tender Tracker Plus Pack is available only with Admiral and requires a Seetrac Tender Tracking System. The Seetrac Base Unit can track up to 99 tenders, dinghies, jet skis or even passengers carrying Seetrac Tender Units.

Like most charting and navigation programs, Admiral uses a combination of toolbars, menus, and floating windows. Like VNS, Admiral has a highly customizable Toolbar and Console, including scores of Toolbar button and Console panel choices. The Night or Twilight screen intensity modes are also customizable, letting you set the shade of red (Night Vision) and/or the shade of gray (Twilight Vision) using a slider bar rather than choosing from pre–set factory selections.

Unfortunately, Admiral loses about a third of the screen to the combined area of the Toolbar, NavBar and Console–data windows that cannot be resized or repositioned. And although it is designed with many shortcuts, or "Hot Keys", Admiral does not include a standard Windows "Undo" command. Jeppesen provides a nice two–page list of all Admiral Hot Keys as a downloadable PDF (see link).

Since Admiral has more features than VNS, there are more choices under Tools>Options. Admiral has an active GlassBridge tab, which VNS does not have. It also adds tabs for any installed Plus Packs. Admiral's Enhanced AIS filtering shows up within the Targets tab, letting you filter AIS data to display only particular types of vessels, such as cargo ships, tankers, passenger ships or even law enforcement vessels. Of course data in is only as good as data out: for this feature to work properly the vessel must broadcast their class or type, in addition to their MMSI number.

The most important difference between the VNS and Admiral interface is the NavView button on the toolbar. NavView is an alternate interface with larger buttons designed for touch screens or rough weather. It includes an InfoBar at the bottom of the screen with navigation information, a trip odometer and a display of GPS signal strength. Within NavView, a NavInfo panel displays the most important navigation data, such as Course Over Ground (COG), Speed Over Ground (SOG) and GPS data in a large–font display. This information also can be displayed in a time series format, which Nobeltec calls a "Strip Chart".

WORKING WITH CHARTS

Admiral is designed to be used with its proprietary cartography, Passport vector charts, which must be purchased separately by region. However, the purchase of C–Map by Jeppesen last year, combined with the announcement of display errors in some Passport charts, have triggered a major shake–up.

The purchase of C–Map heralded a future switch–or at least integration–to C–Map's supplemental data. This is a welcome move, as we noted extremely poor or outdated supplemental data in our review of Nobeltec VNS. In fact, C–Map's treasure trove of data was a driving force in the acquisition.