The Capn 8.0 Good News and Bad News
As a very long term user of The Capn, I was delighted with the good news
that The Capn 8.0 has now been released. The bad news is that is does not allow
direct download of S-57 charts from the NOAA website. The guy at Tech
Support with whom I spoke acknowledged the importance to the company of protecting
its revenues from the sales of charts which sounds just like Nobeltec! To
use the NOAA Vector data you must buy all new Softchart Vector CDs which
contain the NOAA Vector data. For me, the real value of the S-57 charts is the
ability to periodically download up to date, fully corrected charts rather than
having to update charts for corrections published in the Local Notice to
Mariners. It seems that if you really want to use S-57 charts directly from
NOAA, you must use a program such as Coastal Explorer which has no stake in
whose charts you use. The end result appears to be that this loyal and long time
user and champion of The Captain is about to switch to Coastal Explorer. I
have already canceled my upgrade to The Capn 8.0! Other users of The Capn
might want to think carefully before automatically upgrading.
Jim
(Jim & Mim McCrea, mcc272@aol.com Nordic Tug 37-134 "North Star" Home Port
Norwalk, CT)
why not Fugawi? it seems to do a lot and appears to be quite inexpensive
i'm not pushing it, but if it is lacking in something,
that would be interesting to understand
-mo
McC272@aol.com wrote:
As a very long term user of The Capn, I was delighted with the good news
that The Capn 8.0 has now been released. The bad news is that is does not allow
direct download of S-57 charts from the NOAA website. The guy at Tech
Support with whom I spoke acknowledged the importance to the company of protecting
its revenues from the sales of charts which sounds just like Nobeltec! To
use the NOAA Vector data you must buy all new Softchart Vector CDs which
contain the NOAA Vector data. For me, the real value of the S-57 charts is the
ability to periodically download up to date, fully corrected charts rather than
having to update charts for corrections published in the Local Notice to
Mariners. It seems that if you really want to use S-57 charts directly from
NOAA, you must use a program such as Coastal Explorer which has no stake in
whose charts you use. The end result appears to be that this loyal and long time
user and champion of The Captain is about to switch to Coastal Explorer. I
have already canceled my upgrade to The Capn 8.0! Other users of The Capn
might want to think carefully before automatically upgrading.
Jim
(Jim & Mim McCrea, mcc272@aol.com Nordic Tug 37-134 "North Star" Home Port
Norwalk, CT)
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Jim:
This is the very reason that I bought Coastal Explorer. I think the Capn
and Nobeltec feel that their current base has already bought their charts
and since they have this significant investment they will not leave for
another product. As a former Nobeltec user with an old version and old
charts switching to Coastal Explorer was a no brainer for me. I can use my
old charts or the new vector ones. The other thing that amazes me is that
most boaters don't know the S-57 charts exist. Since they will not be
advertised in magazines or boat catalogs they assume that nothing has
changed. I am also impressed by how often NOAA is updating the S-57 charts.
The idea of updating all my charts instantly for free with a 4 minute
download is a huge advantage but I think that it is still relatively
unknown by the average cruiser.
Frank Burrows Destiny 1979 43' Viking MY Piney
Narrows Chesapeake Bay
As a very long term user of The Capn, I was delighted with the good news
that The Capn 8.0 has now been released. The bad news is that is does
not allow
direct download of S-57 charts from the NOAA website. The guy at Tech
Support with whom I spoke acknowledged the importance to the company of
protecting
its revenues from the sales of charts which sounds just like Nobeltec!
I have used all of the Big 4 (Capn, Nobeltec, Fugawi and Coastal Explorer).
CE is a lot more user friendly than the others, and you can use the S-57
charts directly.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Burrows" fburrows@mail.com
To: trawlers-and-trawlering@lists.samurai.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 1:55 PM
Subject: T&T: The Capn 8.0 Good News and Bad News
Jim:
This is the very reason that I bought Coastal Explorer. I think the Capn
and Nobeltec feel that their current base has already bought their charts
and since they have this significant investment they will not leave for
another product. As a former Nobeltec user with an old version and old
charts switching to Coastal Explorer was a no brainer for me. I can use my
old charts or the new vector ones. The other thing that amazes me is that
most boaters don't know the S-57 charts exist. Since they will not be
advertised in magazines or boat catalogs they assume that nothing has
changed. I am also impressed by how often NOAA is updating the S-57
charts.
The idea of updating all my charts instantly for free with a 4 minute
download is a huge advantage but I think that it is still relatively
unknown by the average cruiser.
Frank Burrows Destiny 1979 43' Viking MY Piney
Narrows Chesapeake Bay
As a very long term user of The Capn, I was delighted with the good news
that The Capn 8.0 has now been released. The bad news is that is does
not allow
direct download of S-57 charts from the NOAA website. The guy at Tech
Support with whom I spoke acknowledged the importance to the company of
protecting
its revenues from the sales of charts which sounds just like Nobeltec!
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trawlers-and-trawlering-request@lists.samurai.com with the word
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Trawlers & Trawlering and T&T are trademarks of Water World
Productions. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Here Here!
Quite some time ago, after years of loyal use, I gave up on The
Capn. There doesn't really seem
to be anybody there doing real work anymore - it's a dead end. I switched
to Coastal Explorer -
it works great, though it's missing a few features the capn has. However,
it does do
vector charts from NOAA nicely and they are responsive to bug
reports. Also, with the help
of another user and some gentle persuasion from me, the current version of
Coastal Explorer
will read in the native capn files, so you can move forward with all of
your routes, marks, alarm zones,
etc.
-tom
At 12:54 PM 5/24/2005, McC272@aol.com wrote:
As a very long term user of The Capn, I was delighted with the good news
that The Capn 8.0 has now been released. The bad news is that is does
not allow
direct download of S-57 charts from the NOAA website. The guy at Tech
Support with whom I spoke acknowledged the importance to the company of
protecting
its revenues from the sales of charts which sounds just like Nobeltec! To
use the NOAA Vector data you must buy all new Softchart Vector CDs which
contain the NOAA Vector data. For me, the real value of the S-57 charts
is the
ability to periodically download up to date, fully corrected charts
rather than
having to update charts for corrections published in the Local Notice to
Mariners. It seems that if you really want to use S-57 charts directly from
NOAA, you must use a program such as Coastal Explorer which has no stake in
whose charts you use. The end result appears to be that this loyal and
long time
user and champion of The Captain is about to switch to Coastal Explorer. I
have already canceled my upgrade to The Capn 8.0! Other users of The Capn
might want to think carefully before automatically upgrading.
Jim
(Jim & Mim McCrea, mcc272@aol.com Nordic Tug 37-134 "North Star" Home Port
Norwalk, CT)
http://lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/trawlers-and-trawlering
To unsubscribe send email to
trawlers-and-trawlering-request@lists.samurai.com with the word
UNSUBSCRIBE and nothing else in the subject or body of the message.
Trawlers & Trawlering and T&T are trademarks of Water World
Productions. Unauthorized use is prohibited.