NavSim Sailcruiser, an excellent navigation software for PC. I have been using it for over a year on my Macbook Pro, thankfully you can ran Windows on dual core Macbooks. I have many more positive experiences with NavSim Sailcruiser than any other programs I've tried. The weakest point of my experience is C-Map installation, especially dealing with US/Italian protection coding. It should be much more user friendly, however I have to say that both NavSim and C-map are very cooperative in making you up and running.
The only loss is time but the results are very positive. C-Map Planer is almost useless when you have NavSim planning features available.
NavSim features and technology involved are very impressive. If you do not like C-Map charts NavSim can run almost any other e-charts on the market.
I read comments on the forums; why do you need PC software for navigation while the dedicated plotters can do the job?
My opinion is that flexibility to operate navigation software on PC or Mac is unmatched with the plotter and is going to be even better when the small PC with solid state flash HD come on the market. The system which you can run on both PC or Mac would be a winner. I still will use the plotter as a primary electronic navigation device and ultimately would like to have rugged tablet with Blue Tooth and OS-X or MS Windows (OS-X much more stable than Windows) based software as a secondary electronic navigation tool.
I mostly agree with Mad Mariner's NavSim review and I think that mentioned weakness of "help and documentation" issues can be resolved by NavSim Team very easily. Only on the contrary to Mad Mariner review, I find that NavSim Sailcruiser is a very intuitive navigation software to work with.
Janski
Joined: 2008-01-07