Pocket PC for Marine Navigation

Markus Ritter

Pocket PC's with Maptech's Pocket Navigator accept the free charts from NOAA and have touch screens that make it very easy to add routes.  Some sample screens of the Door County area using a Pharos GPS 525 with the built in GPS and Wi-Fi are shown at:  http://www.markusritter.users.greenbaynet.com/Pocket-PC/Blog.html

Tests with the demo version from Memory-Map.com showed that it uses a unique chart format called Quick Chart, but they give you the software you need to convert from BSB to Quick Chart.  I tried it and I liked it.  I ordered the defeatured version called Pocket Navigator from Maptech for $50.  I was able to get all of the US and Canadian Great Lake charts loaded into the 1G SD card.

 

The Pharos GPS 525 is pretty versatile, on the road it will do street navigation, it can check e-mail at hotspots, look up stuff like the weather map on the net, even play Power Point Presentation that are downloaded from the net, and the Fugawi Fishing Hotspots disk of the inland lakes plays on the Pocket PC.
 

In Dec. 06', I made my first VoIP call using Skype to a regular phone utilizing the free Wi-Fi hotspot at the North Shore Medical Clinic. It works very well when listening to a real person, but when listening to electronic answering machine's messages there is break up, but understandable.  The recording left on the answering machine was just fine.  More details and links at:
 http://www.markusritter.users.greenbaynet.com/Pocket-PC/Blog.html. 

Some Pocket PC’s released in late 06’ have screens about 50% bigger for those that think this 2.7 incher is too small.  Let me know what you think.  Thanks