coastal explorer and activecaptain

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Yes, I'm pretty sure you just turn on the AC add-on. There is an Options menu, and if you go in there you will find the AC add-on. Do whatever download and install that is called for, and you should be good to go. I'm pretty sure teh CE evaluation is full function.

By the way, CE is trialing new AC functionality that lets you upload your routes to AC, adn download routes as well. I haven't tried any of it, but I think it's all part of ACs new route sharing.
 
Unfortunately in order to download the ac addon from coastal, it needs to registered. and of course the only way to do that is by buying it.

Ill email them tomorrow, hopefully theres a way to test the two of them together.

As an aside, ac makes you download the latest adobe shockwave, and not surprisingly version 18.1 that you get as of this weekend locks up firefox. I thought it might have been because my laptop ran vista, but unfortunately it also locks up the laptop I bought today running windows 10 too. :banghead:


Im going to be taking the boat from kemah tx to port canaveral in the next few months and I am trying to find all that I can about places to hole up for the night along the icw. So far I have gotten the most info from peoples blogs,
 
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I've used AC on CE for several years, so can try describing it for you....

On the CE screen, there are view tabs at the top of the screen, one of which is "Guide Book". Click that and all the AC marks show up on the chart, color coded per AC standards. Click on any one and all the AC info comes up in a side screen, including reviews.

If you want to comment on an AC mark, you can do it from within CE.

One of the best things is that the AC data base is kept locally on the CE machine so no internet is required. It also saves any comments/reviews that you make. Then, when you have internet, you synchronize and all your reviews get posted to AC, and any updates and changes get downloaded to your CE machine bringing it up to date.

The only thing you can't do from within CE is create a new AC marker. So if you want to report a new anchorage, marine, or whatever, you can't do that from within CE. Maybe this has been fixed with the new enhancements that allow route sharing between CE and AC, but I don't know.

So in summary I'd say the AC integration is quite good, though I do sometimes create new marks and it would be good to have that in CE.
 
Great thanks for that. I won't mind so much plunking the money down without a full demo now.

Gotta say that panning thru tiled charts is way smoother with CE than it is with opencpn. Way too frustrating trying to pan along the ice in Texas with opencpn.
 
Can you load the CDs/DVDs on two computers? One at my home and one on the boat? Also say my boat computer dies, can I load the SW on the new computer?
 
Can you load the CDs/DVDs on two computers? One at my home and one on the boat? Also say my boat computer dies, can I load the SW on the new computer?

Coastal Explorer allows you to install it (including options add-ons and charts) on three separate computers simultaneously. If you need to change a computer you just uninstall it from the one (assuming that computer is still alive) and then call them and let them know which computer has been removed.

Marty........................
 
Thanks Marty....
 
well I think I am going to go with opencpn after all.

once I figured out how to set some options, panning with the charts tiling correctly works much better.

Setting up multiple routes ahead of time is a lot easier in opencpn. Since I havent traveled the upper gulf and west florida by boat before I want to try and set up a plan of where stops will be if possible.

I bought a hockey puck gps for the laptop and it works fine with opencpn but as soon as I started CE it warned me that brand of gps was dangerous (blue screen stuff) and when I followed the link the article supporting the warning was from 2010? I guess I could continue to make judgement calls from knowledge others have of devices from 5 years ago but I dont. The gps did work fine with CE.

I'll miss the integration of active captain, maybe as I couldnt get them to allow me to eval both, but I'll adjust.
 
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Im going to be taking the boat from kemah tx to port canaveral in the next few months and I am trying to find all that I can about places to hole up for the night along the icw. So far I have gotten the most info from peoples blogs,

Just in case... you know you can run AC direct from their website, yes?

-Chris
 

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